


What is Hidden, What is Seen

by ExpatGirl



Series: Alternate Season 11 [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Agender Angels, Alcohol, Alternate Season/Series 11, Alternate Universe - The French Mistake, Angel Family, Angel True Forms, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avenging Charlie Bradbury via bathtub, Basically Apology Porn, Battle Sigils, Blasphemy, Blood, Break Up, Canon-Typical Violence, Carpenter Gothic Church Architecture, Castiel & Sam Winchester Friendship, Dragons (mentioned), Drinking & Talking, Enochian, Episode Fix-it, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Smut, Extended Desert Metaphors, Flagrant Misuse of Grade I Listed Buildings, Free Will, God - Freeform, Guest Stars, Hand Jobs, Hannah Lives, Heaven, Heavy Angst, Hell, Hugs, I couldn't keep them broken up for long, Implied Crowley/Dean Winchester, Implied Switching, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kissing, Love, M/M, Metatron Being a Dick, Misuse of Religious Studies, Not Beta Read, Oz - Freeform, POV Alternating, Possession, Post-Mark of Cain, Post-Season/Series 10, Reconciliation, Season/Series 10, Season/Series 11, Self-Harm, Sigils, So much possession!, Soul Makeout, Suicide (mentioned), Swearing, Team Free Will, The Darkness - Freeform, True Names, Vessel Consent Issues, Wings, character death (mentioned), love and heartbreak and love, righting wrongs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-03-31 22:10:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 83,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3994783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Darkness has descended, and Castiel must make a choice. What, in reality, is the nature of Free Will, and where does love end and self-effacement begin? And why didn't Castiel know about the Mark of Cain and its relation to The Darkness in the first place?</p><p>This began as a one-shot called "The Hanged Man" and has turned into...something else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Hanged Man

**Author's Note:**

> _Wow, so. The season finale. This is....my response to that. I've tagged it as Dean/Cas, because there IS a love deceleration in there but honestly it's really more of a break-up. Will they stay broken up? I don't know. If I can figure out some way for them to be together and have it be a healthy relationship, then I'll probably build on this. I like to think all of my writings occur in the same universe, but we'll see if they can come back from this._
> 
>  
> 
> _As always, if you catch any typos, please let me know. Enjoy (?)._
> 
> _**Edited to add:** I changed the name of the overall work. I changed the rating from G to M for swearing and eventual handjobs (truly, two of the finer things in life). Forgive me for being all over the place; I didn't intend to keep going on this. _
> 
>  
> 
> _I have tried to remain canon-compliant so far as I am able, but occasionally the canon of the show flummoxes me a bit. Apologies if there are any glaring inconsistencies._
> 
> [](http://imgur.com/DphK0Ud)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Goodbye.

“Cas.”

“Hello, Dean.”

“I—are you—“ The words wouldn’t dislodge themselves from Dean’s throat, or unstick themselves from his tongue.

Castiel said nothing, but slowly turned to face Dean. It took a moment, in the eerie, half-drowned light, for anything but the familiar profile of his face to materialize. Dean’s heart gave a jolt when he saw the red tracks of stigmata tears, a stark contrast to the calm expression Cas wore.

“Wait. Is that—an _attack dog spell_?” Dean took one instinctive step towards Castiel, before checking himself so abruptly he appeared to hit a wall.

Cas blinked in surprise. It was the only movement he made that gave it away. Indeed, he was being unusually still, even for him.

“Oh. Yes. I’m afraid the witch bested me with that little trick.” Suddenly the tear tracks were gone, and Cas’ face was unmarred once more.

“She was able to cast a spell on _an angel_?” Dean looked as though he wanted to take another step forward, but did not. “I mean, you, uh...don’t you have your grace back now?”

“It surprised me as well,” Cas admitted. “But something about using that Book seemed to magnify her abilities. Considerably. And we both know I haven’t been much of an angel for a long time. Even with my own grace back, it’s difficult. It’s been mutilated—beyond repair, I suspect.”

“Oh,” Dean said, and swallowed audibly. “I didn't realize.”

“I know.” Cas did not seem angry. He didn’t seem much of anything. “It doesn’t matter.” He turned back towards the window once more. After a long moment he said: “I have never seen this before. When I awoke, after I killed Crowley, I felt a... _wrongness_ but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Once my vision returned I saw,” he tilted his chin towards the boiling dark “this”.

“You killed Crowley?” Dean asked, to Castiel’s back.

“That was the point of the spell, yes.” He shrugged. “And perhaps I didn’t fight it as hard as I might have done.” He nodded his head over to the far corner of the room, where Dean saw a telltale whitish-gray pile of ash. “I confess, I felt mixed emotions when I realized what I’d done to him. I am not entirely sure why. But it’s for the best, in the end.”

Dean had not moved, and Cas still stood, transfixed, staring at the gathering gloom as it heaved its great mass in from the east, a black-mouthed sunrise.

“The Mark’s gone,” Cas said then. It was not a question. ”The spell worked. I can tell.” He seemed to unravel a little suddenly, slouching in on himself.

“You what? So you did go ahead. _Rowena_ used the Book to remove the Mark?” Dean forgot himself, taking two long steps towards Cas, before pulling up short again.

“Sam told me to finish the job no matter what, no matter the cost,” Cas said. He looked over his shoulder at Dean, but the blue of his eyes had bled away in the grim light. They glittered dark and colorless. “Dean, an innocent man died for this. I _let_ him die. But I had to keep at least one of my promises, to at least one of you.”

Dean could barely find his voice. He ran his hand through his hair, aghast. “Cas—the spell you cast. It...The Mark wasn't a _curse_ , it was a _key._ A key, and a lock. It was the only thing keeping the Darkness at bay.”

Cas went, if possible, even stiller. He turned and looked at Dean directly for the first time, the first time in over a week. The first time, really, in over a year. Dean's mouth went dry.

“What? How do you know this?”

“Death told me.”

“Death told you.” Cas opened his mouth to say something, then paused. “Does Sam know?”

“Yeah. He was there when I spoke to Death.”

“Sam knew.” For a moment, Cas looked so stricken that Dean looked down at his own hand in a panic, expecting to see it burying an angel blade straight into Castiel's heart. “Sam knew,” he said, more calmly. “He knew that using this spell would unleash this, and he made no attempt to contact me? Not a phone call, not a prayer.” He looked skyward. The swirling smoke outside the window wreathed around his head, an obscene parody of a halo.

“We—it's kind of a long story,” Dean said. He felt dizzy all at once, and the floor tilted up at him alarmingly.

“You should sit.”

Dean staggered to the nearest chair, sinking into it with a groan. Cas did not follow him.

“I knew I would have to watch you murder the world,” Cas said, without any heat. He looked back at the window, where a fine black spiderweb had begun to form. “I just didn't think it would be so soon.”

“Cas...”

“It doesn't matter, Dean.” For the first time in their whole conversation, anger flared a little in Castiel's voice. He took a breath. “Where is Sam now?” he asked, in a careful, neutral voice that Dean found somehow more cutting than his anger.

“He's in the car. It's outside. For whatever reason this—stuff seems to leave the Impala alone. He had to pull right up to the door so that I could get in here, but it was close.”

“Go back to your brother.”

“What?”

“Go back to your brother, Dean. Get in your car, and go back to your home.”

“Wait, what? Aren't you coming? We have to do something about this.”

“Yes. We do.” Cas looked at Dean then, and for the first time in many years, Dean felt himself standing alone, looking at Cas but eye-to-eye with something inhuman.

“You're just going to _stay_ here?” Dean asked, disbelieving.

“Of course not. I will go to Heaven, kneel in abject apology, and hope that when they're done with me, I'll be alive enough to be of use to stop this situation.” The corner of his mouth curved up, razor-sharp, humorless. “Though I doubt it. Hannah has no reason to trust or forgive me now.”

“But how are you going to get there?”

“I'll fly,” Cas said, matter-of-fact, as though he were talking about a trip across the street.

“Your wings work?”

“I told you, they were mutilated when my grace was cut out, just like the rest of me. 'Work' is a very generous description of what they do. But I suspect I have one flight left in me. I can get to the Gate and hope that they'll let me in.”

“What? No, that's crazy. Let me drive you, at least.”

“Dean, we are two days' drive away in perfect visibility and no traffic. A rising primordial Darkness and the ensuing chaos will considerably hinder our speed. I will make one last flight. When I fail, as I inevitably will, at least I will know about it quickly.”

“Cas, listen...”

“Go back to your car, Dean. Go back to your brother and go home. If my plan works, I will let you know. And if it doesn't work—well, you will know soon enough.”

The fine black spiderweb on the windowpane turned to look at them. It appeared to breathe. There was a very faint hum, quieter than a breath, incongruously soft, strangely compelling, almost pleasant to hear.

Castiel winced, then. “Go.”

“Cas.”

“Dean,” Cas said, his voice gone cold and still, unfathomable as an ocean. Dean felt as though he'd gulped down a mouthful of icy water. “Go.”

There was a crackle of blue-white light, made sickly green by the Darkness. Dean saw the shadow of wings appear, angular, ragged—the nimble pinions ruined but still, still so impressive that all he could do was stare.

Cas vanished.

****

It took nearly three days to reach the bunker. The sun disappeared, swallowed up like an egg in the long, slow slide of a serpent's belly, and the moon found no light to borrow. Kansas had, for some reason, not yet been touched, and so cars poured in from all directions, in a panic, each one covered in a delicate filigree of black.

They did not hear from Castiel for over two weeks. Dean slept.

****

On the morning of the twentieth day after the coming of the Darkness, Castiel, former Shield of God, stood in an abandoned playground. He had one last appointment to keep.

That he was standing there at all defied explanation. But he'd long grown used to being the one inexplicable thing, the impossible linchpin of a universe that was forever hurtling towards its close.  
Well, perhaps not the _only_ inexplicable thing. The other one came towards him now, alone in the stark glare of headlights.

“You came,” Cas said.

“Of course I came,” Dean said, stopping a few feet in front of him. He seemed slightly out of breath. “We need to stop this—this is Croatoan Mark Two. Except this time, bullets don't work.”

A bleak looked crossed Castiel's face then. “Yes. You're right, of course.” He put his hands in his pockets, an oddly human stance that made Dean blink, remembering the eyes that had fixed them in their deathless stare not so long ago.

“So, what do we do?”

“Dean, before I answer that, let me tell you a story.”

“Oh....okay,” Dean said, taken aback.

“The Darkness spoke to Lucifer, it corrupted him from the inside, by taking that which was good in him and pushing it into something unrecognizable and ugly. It told him what he wanted to hear until he believed everything it had to say. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Not—not really."  
  
“Lucifer was the first angel to exercise Free Will. Right?” Cas prompted.

“If the Mark corrupted him, how is that in any way Free Will?”

“He freely took the Mark, Dean. God gave him a _choice_. _That_ was the exercise of Free Will. The Darkness was defeated by the four archangels, and first among them was Lucifer. The best, the bravest, the most selfless. He _knew_ what the Mark could do to him—knew that it was likely, even, and he agreed to do it anyway, to spare the others. And now he lives with the consequences of that choice. Just like all of us who make choices.” Cas gave a small smile then, his eyes sliding away for a moment. It did not seem like a particularly happy smile. “He made a choice out of love: love for his Father and for his family and for all that they would create, and it was this love that drove him to hate humans. How could he be expected to love anything more than the family for which he had taken on this burden?”

“I don't understand, if God gave Lucifer a choice, why was doubt 'Murder One' for you guys? Why were you forbidden from...from feeling, from choosing?”

“Because when God saw what it did to Lucifer—what that first choice did to his favorite, he decided that it was not for angels. As so much of all things is not for angels. Draconian, yes, but I suppose there's a certain logic to be found there.” Cas paused, considering. “When Lucifer shared it with Cain, he really did believe he was doing something good, showing him the real truth. But he failed to make the true nature of the choice known, and in so doing, denied Cain the chance to exercise Free Will.”

“If you knew all this, why didn't you know about the Darkness? About the Mark?”

“I didn't. This information was never shared beyond the archangels, who agreed to seal it off from the rest of the Host. They existed before any of us: the first, peerless—his best warriors. We came much later, to wage war against the Leviathan and then, later still, against our brother.”

“How do you know it now?” Dean asked. His heart hammered like a fist against his rib cage, threatening to bruise it.

“I asked those who were there, at the beginning. Before the beginning.”

“You asked...who?”

“Lucifer and Michael.”

For a long moment, Dean said nothing. “Cas. What do you mean?”

“Hannah agreed to let me in to Heaven when I told her I would descend to Hell and speak to our brothers myself, face-to-face. And so...I did.” Cas' face flickered briefly with something dark and awful, before growing calm again.

“Alone.”

“Yes, alone. I will not risk any more pointless deaths—human or angel—to undo damage that I have played a part in causing.”

“You _did not_ cause this.”

“No. I didn't. But like it or not, I still had a hand in it. Even indirectly, it came about from my involvement. As a result of my...weaknesses.” Cas looked grim, but faced Dean head-on, a soldier. “But that doesn't matter.”

“You went to Hell alone,” Dean repeated, almost to himself.

“I've done it before,” Cas said. He smiled again, another mirthless smile. “You were not impressed with the outcome of that, I recall. Not my best work.” He held up his hand when Dean moved to speak. “I'm being self-deprecating. It's a form of humor.”

It struck Dean, then, that he had not laid a hand on Castiel in friendship, in a long time.

“So, what do we _do_ , then?” Dean asked.

“You do as you have always done, continue hunting things with your brother.”

“Wait, what? What about this Darkness crap?”

“Heaven must marshal all of its resources. The Darkness was barely beaten before, with four archangels and our Father himself. Now they have only two archangels, in Hell, and a diminished Host. And me.”

“I don't like the way this sounds.”

“Dean,” Cas said. His hand flexed, as though he would bring it up and lay it on Dean's shoulder, but he checked himself and dropped it to his side. “Please understand: I have learned much from you, and for that I'm so thankful I cannot even say. Much of it was unintentional, lessons you didn't even know you were teaching me. But you taught them well. For all of my faults, I do learn my lessons, sooner or later.”

Dean said nothing.

“I told you once that I was not a hammer, do you remember? And that is still true, I am not one, though I _can_ be one. I have been one, both for Heaven, and for you. One does not _love_ a hammer, I know, but I was glad to be of use. But I am tired of being a hammer for anyone else's purposes. If I stay here, there are only two outcomes for me: listen to what the Darkness is telling me, and turn myself to its purpose, make myself its tool, or continue to serve as yours.”

“Cas, you...are _not—_ you can't possibly think you are...”

“I know what I am, Dean.” Cas' gaze was unbearable, his voice rimed with ice. Dean could feel it curling through his blood. “I am my own, for once, for the first time in my entire life. And it is a not-inconsiderable lifespan we're talking about. I will not be turned to anyone's purpose—not Heaven, not the Darkness. Not even you, the one I love above all other things. The one I offered to stand beside for eternity, because I thought that's what you wanted.”

Dean stared, unable to formulate anything resembling a coherent sentence.

“My life has been given over to obedience. I thought that it _was_ love. And so I gave it you. You said that you needed me and I believed you. My life has been predicated on how useful I am, how well I fulfill the role I am needed for. That was the love I was given, and my obedience was how I returned it. I fell because you commanded it, and I did it as wholly as I possibly could, because that is how an angel works.” Cas looked away from Dean again. “But I have learned much from you, as I said, and one of the greatest lessons I have learned is this: one does not love a hammer, not really.”

“What? What do you mean? What _lesson_?” Dean asked, bewildered.

“When you failed to kill me with that angel blade, you said that next time you wouldn't miss. But Dean,” and here, at last, Cas reached out for him, put his hand on his arm, the barest ghost of a touch, “your aim is always true. You hit your mark as cleanly as you hit any other.” He dropped his hand. “Or are you going to tell me that it wasn't you?”

Dean shook his head. “No, it was. It was me, but it wasn't....”

“Dean. Enough.”

“I know you can't forgive me.”

“But I do forgive you.”

“Well, you shouldn't.”

“Don't tell me what I should and should not do. I forgive you, and that is all. I just...cannot go on doing this. Dean, if I stay, I will be corrupted by the things I've told you. They are all true, but they do not define me. And if the Darkness claims me for its own ends—and it will—they will come to define me. Or if the Darkness does not claim me, I will still be corrupted by all of the things I have told you.”

“So you're, what, just going back to Heaven to do whatever they say? You're going to be their hammer again?” Dean said, shaking with anger, or sadness, or both.

“ _No_ , Dean,” Cas said, his voice a sharp-edged growl. “I will go to Heaven, and _we_ will come up with a battle plan, together. We already are. And, as before, we will beat back the Darkness. And when it is over and this planet is safe, I will finally, at last get a chance to rest.” He did look very tired.

“It's not your home.”

“No, it isn't. Neither is here. I thought, once, that perhaps it might be, but I learned.”

“But...”

“Enough. Dean, go back to your brother, and your hunts. They make you happy, and I hold your happiness even before my own. Which, I suppose,” he added, with a sad laugh, “has always been my problem.”

Suddenly, a glimmer of light beamed up from the ground behind them, and the Gate began to open. “My ride's here.” said Cas. “I am glad, in the end, that I know you. I have been glad to be of use, truly, and I _am_ your friend, whatever else you may think me to be.”

The light grew.

“Goodbye, Dean.”

The world went dark once more.

 


	2. The Devil and the Fool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel makes a deal, and someone finally gets what they deserve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I couldn't get the idea of a sibling argument in the depths of Hell out of my head._

Hell had its own kind of order. It was chaotic, but it was not _chaos_. The tortures were elaborate, true, and their intricacies defied the understanding of any rational being, but Castiel had not been a rational being for years. He wondered if he had ever been one. As he descended now he could see the infernal logic behind each horror he saw. Hell was angelic in origin, after all, and so his Father's watermark appeared everywhere now that he understood what he was seeing. Hell was a symptom of Heaven. It was its dark mirror, reflecting back the blood and brimstone a hundredfold. It felt, almost, like the home he'd never wanted.

He had been here before. The first time he had clear orders and he knew the righteous strength of submission: no doubt, no fear, no failure. He thought that was love. He had succeeded and lost himself along the way. The second time, he had come on his own initiative and he had known the false strength of hubris. He thought that was love, too. His failure had been complete. The third time, well, that was different again. He had come of his own volition, but out of hard-won humility rather than pride. Castiel had no more room for strengths, false or true. He had only himself. Perhaps, he mused, as he spiraled through the shrieking air, this was actually love.

This was number four. He had come to make a deal.

The Cage came into view, a spike of ice amongst the tongues of flame. He knew from experience that it would be months before he reached it. This part of Hell was all but abandoned as demons and hell-beasts had made their slow way back toward the earth. They had no time, no reverence for the old ways. The time of angels was ending, and that included here too.

Still, this did not mean the way was _easy._ What demons there were—old as the foundations of Hell itself, pouring their blind, grasping hatred out from their prisons—gnawed and tore at him. He felt himself char at the edges. And older creatures still, those he would have once called his brothers, howled as he passed, the glare of his seraph's fire stinging their eyes. They screamed at him, called him unrepeatable names. These sunk in sharper than any fangs. Castiel did not stop.

At last, all at once, the air froze. His wings became encrusted with frost, and the resinous smoke from his singed feathers crackled and solidified around him. He felt brittle and wondered if he would shatter. A part of him would welcome it.

“Cage” of course, was only a loose approximation of the thing that had held Lucifer for millennia, and now housed his other brother as well. The spellwork was dark and ugly, radiating off of it in deep pulses. Each wave made his heart gutter like a dying candle. Its shape was physically impossible, twisting and turning like a universe devouring itself. It made him dizzy to look on it, so he did not look on it at all. He had been here before, and so he shielded his eyes and slid into the frozen heart of Hell, operating by memory alone.

“Hello, Lucifer. Hello, Michael.”

Castiel was grateful, then, for the spellwork and the locks. Twin banners of grace flared out at him, whip-like, deadly. The precision of the aim was unrivaled. They hit the edge of the Cage and recoiled with a roar.

“I would apologize for removing your vessel from you, Lucifer, but I am still not sorry. I only wish I could have gotten yours, as well, Michael.”

Behind the bars, Castiel could feel the archangels seethe. The Cage crackled and hissed, like a glacier breaking apart. He stood straighter, flexing his wings minutely to prevent them from freezing solid. Differences in temperature were such odd sensations to Castiel, who had long grown used to his inability to feel them on earth.

“I have come to offer you a deal.”

The Cage was silent. Like the moment before a tsunami descends.

“I'm serious.”

Silence. But listening this time.

“Lucifer, you asked me why I wanted to know about the Mark. I promised you I would come back with information. I've learned to keep my promises, as you can see.”

There was a scream, like a continent breaking apart.

“Michael, I will get to you in a minute. Please just let me talk.”

There was a growl, which sounded petulant for all its ear-shattering volume.

“Thank you. Now, here is what I know, and here is what I offer.” Castiel drew his wings closer in on himself, shaking off the mantle of ice that collected on their surface. “The Darkness has been released back onto earth—yes I _know_ that should be impossible, Lucifer. I'm afraid, well, I'm afraid that Cain is dead, and the one he passed it on to removed it without understanding its true nature.”

Another earth-rending shriek.

“Oh...well, the name of Cain's heir doesn't really matter.” Castiel said, feeling a tendril of all-too-human nervousness snake through him and hoping he came across as casual.

He didn't.

“If you must know, it was, um, Dean. Uh. Winchester. Yes.”

Wincing and shielding himself from falling rocks, Castiel heard the hell-beasts he had passed all those months ago flee in terror at the sound coming from the Cage now.

“Well, I never thought I'd agree with either of you, but in this case you're not entirely wrong.” Castiel said ruefully. “But that's not why I'm here. What I want to know is if you'd be willing to make a deal with me for your freedom. Both of you.”

Castiel retreated a few paces, slipping on the ice as he went. He waited for the noise to die down, but it did not, and so he shouted over it. “I _am_ serious! I _swear_. I'm not here on Heaven's orders; I'm here of my own free will.”

At that, the noise stopped.

“Yes, I chose to come down here. Surely you can appreciate that. Now listen, _please._ If I go to Heaven on your behalf and get a guarantee of your freedom, will you help them defeat the Darkness?” Castiel frowned, trying to understand what he was hearing; both Lucifer and Michael were talking at once, and through the walls of the Cage it was hard to make out. Eventually, though, he understood. “No, you two are the only remaining archangels. Raphael is gone.”

A question.

“Because I killed him.” A strange mixture of emotions gripped Castiel right then: shame at killing one of his own family, satisfaction at besting an enemy, and sadness that it had all been so unnecessary. He snapped his attention back to the Cage.

“Hannah runs Heaven now. You will not have met her, Lucifer She came after your time. She is...she is remarkable, and I trust her to do what's best for Heaven more than anyone. I believe she'd be willing to listen if I could present a strong case. But it would have to be a _strong_ case, iron-clad. I am...not entirely in her favor right now.” he admitted, uncomfortably.

The Cage hissed.

“No, there is no more reprogramming.” Castiel said, suddenly burning so fiercely that the ice around him melted. They could feel the heat from inside, he realized, because he felt those ribbons of grace retract in surprise.

“You would not be able to return to Heaven, or even, really, to this dimension. But if I can adjure you— _both_ of you—to an agreement to leave this dimension forever, upon our victory, without harming or claiming either Heaven, Hell, Purgatory or earth for yourselves, I might be able to get her to agree. You would have to leave and never come back. I admit, it is still an exile,” Castiel said, almost contritely, “but perhaps it is better than the one you currently deal with.”

The Cage was quiet for a long moment. Castiel began to ache from the cold, from the nauseating pulse of the spellwork against his grace and he longed to leave. But he could not. He had to see this through or die trying.

The Cage spoke. Castiel could not tell if it was Lucifer or Michael, or if they both spoke in tandem, but he pressed in closer to listen. “Good. But I have one condition more: I need a good will gesture, a token of, uh, _faith_ , if you will." He paused, breathless. “You have an innocent boy's soul in there. Give it to me to deliver into Heaven, where it belongs. This will provide the Host with the assurance that you mean what you say. You can keep the body.”

There was a mighty roar then, loud enough to make the Cage vibrate slightly. Fine cracks appeared in its meters-thick shell of ice.

“What _condition_? You're hardly in a position to be making demands.”

Another hiss, this one a quiet susurration where the others had been howls.

“What do you mean? What token of faith could I possibly offer you?” Castiel pressed even closer, ignoring the way his heart continued to leap in and out of existence. When the whispering finally stopped, Castiel stepped away, frantic, all the way to the boundary of fire. He felt unable to stand, and so sank down right there amid the blood and ash and frost. For a long moment there was silence in the heart of Hell. Finally, heaved himself off the floor and walked back to where his brothers waited, silent and eternal.

“I understand. But you cannot have the Winchesters. If you insist on it then I will tear this deal down, and you can sit in here and rot.” He drew out his blade and opened a long silver gash on one hand. “Here is what I offer instead. Do you accept?”

They did. They did.

Castiel did not waste any time, but pressed himself flat against the Cage, growling in pain. He gathered up the frayed soul—gibbering, destroyed, but still burning—into his arms, and left the Pit.

On earth, one day had passed.


	3. The World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunting people, saving things, the family business.

The world was screwed. Completely, utterly screwed. The drive from the warehouse to the bunker had made that patently clear. They had lurched through mile after mile of smoky fog. Cars were abandoned in back country lanes, their doors thrown wide and their contents scattered to the wind. A chill crept across the land as the heat of the summer earth collided with the cooling air, exhaling a pallid humidity. Everything felt clammy and unnatural. Things were inexplicably on fire. Why, Dean wondered absently, when the Apocalypse came, things always seemed to be inexplicably on fire. Did people just forget them in their panic and let them burn out of control, or did the End Times unleash people’s latent pyromania?

What news reports there were seemed confused and panic-stricken. There was talk of climate change; there was talk of the Russians; there was talk of some secret military weapon of mass destruction. There was talk of God, of course. North Korea had, apparently, launched a nuclear warhead at Washington, DC, only to have it disappear completely before it had even cleared Pyongyang. Experts estimated that the lack of sun and warmth would destroy the world’s crops inside eight months. Sam had turned off the radio then.

The Impala had seemed almost a piece of the Darkness itself, as though it had called itself forward and formed a gleaming chrysalis around them. (Dean did not dwell on that image for long.) It had also remained untouched, free from the thin black web that seemed to cling to every other surface in creation. He could not understand why. He could not understand _anything_.

It wasn’t as though they’d never been here before, standing on a crumbling cliff as the world teetered towards its end. The world was so _prone_ to ending that it almost seemed as though it wanted it, as though the call of entropy was too strong for it to ignore. Perhaps it yearned for its own undoing.  

But that was a cop-out. The universe might slide toward decay, it may favor decline, but that did not justify standing on that cliff and giving things a push. Dean remembered raging at Hell, and at Heaven, too, for pushing toward the end before it was due. He'd been angry at their _presumptuousness_. He remembered Zachariah, and the other angels, and how they were willing to lay waste to the world just to settle a family dispute. He remembered Anna, whom he had not thought of in years, with her red hair and soft skin and burning eyes. He thought of how she’d fought against the Apocalypse, and how she’d been captured for wanting to stop that last great push. Doubtlessly she’d been tortured, brainwashed, _recalibrated_. And yet, in spite of all of it, she’d retained enough of her own self to still want to stop it. Dean had been bitter then. He'd hated her for killing his brother and hurting his family, but now he almost admired the ruthlessness of her logic, her flinty angelic resolve. She had to know she would not survive her act of rebellion, but she did it anyway.

And that made him think of Cas. This unleashed a squirming mass of emotions in him that defied naming. He tried to grab them, to pin them down like insects under glass, but they slithered free with a howl.

Which of those angels would now call him an ally? How were he and Sam any different to Zachariah and the Host? The Apocalypse rained down on the world now because of _them_. He remembered the first time it had happened. It was an accident. No one could have known that his crossroads deal to save Sam would hurt anyone but Dean. Neither of them had known about the Seals, about vessels, about _anything_ involving Heaven’s bloody political maneuvering.

This time, though? This time they’d done the pushing. This time, he’d taken on a curse without understanding its weight, and Sam had removed it even once he had understood it. Cas was right—Sam had learned the truth and had not made a move to stop the spell from going forward. Given the choice between screwing the world and curing Dean, Sam had chosen him. That knowledge sat leaden and jagged in his gut.

When they had gotten back to the bunker he had screamed at Sam, raving, saying that they both needed to be put down like rabid dogs. Perhaps it was an aftershock of the Mark; his anger had felt as though it was ripping itself out of him, undirected. He’d wanted so badly to fight then, to break bone and split sinew (his own or someone else’s, it didn’t matter), to get his hands on something he could defeat in the physical world. Sam had looked at him wide-eyed, expecting a blow. But Dean had kept his fists to himself and shouted until his voice gave out, until all his anger bled itself out into the ground. He would not raise a hand in violence towards anyone he loved, ever again.

He had not seen Cas in almost a week.  
  
Dean had stood alone in that damn abandoned playground for an hour. He had stared at the intricate pattern of glyphs carved into the sand, waiting for them to glow Heaven-white and open back up. Eventually the rising cold and damp forced him back to his car, where he sat, looking numbly out the windshield and into the sky. Stars had always reminded him slightly of angels: a thousand glittering eyes that wheeled in a great arc over the world. Watchful and out of reach. Now the sky was starless. It stretched Bible-black and empty in all directions. The halogen glare of the Impala’s headlights threw everything into stark relief. He looked down at his watch and was startled to see that it was not yet 9 o'clock in the morning.

He limped back to Kansas with the radio tuned to a dead channel.

“He’s gone,” Dean said when he returned. “He’s gone.” The stone words fell from his mouth and landed at Sam’s feet. Strangely, he did not feel any lighter for having said them.

“Gone where?” Sam asked. He was cautious, careful, like he had been for the past year. He had not tried to stop Dean’s rant after their first homecoming. He had not tried to defend himself, but he had not agreed, either. He had said, as though trying to calm a pain-maddened animal: “We’ll fix it Dean. We will.” After that, they stopped speaking. They drifted around the bunker like ghosts for days until Dean had, miraculously, gotten a text from Cas. (He did not stop to muse on how Kansas still had semi-functioning utilities; he would take his blessings where he could.)

Sam had offered to go along, but the answering message had asked for Dean to come alone. “Right.” Sam said. “Right, okay. Well, see if he can give you a first-hand account of what happened during the spell. Maybe there’s something we can use. And also...also, tell him I hope he’s okay.” Sam had looked away then, and Dean saw his Adam’s apple jump as he swallowed.

“Dean, where's he gone?” Sam asked again now. He put down his mug of coffee and put aside the book he had been leafing through to look at Dean directly.

“Heaven. He's gone back to Heaven,” Dean said, making his way down the stairs with the dragging step of a much older man. “For good this time, I think.”

“What? _Why_? Dean, what happened?”

“He said...he said he had to go work on a battle plan against the Darkness, and that Heaven needed to 'marshal its resources'. Which includes him, obviously.”

“They called him back up.”

“No, he _chose_ to go back up.” Dean said, hating in the bitterness in his voice but unable to stop it. “He said if he stayed, he'd end up corrupted. He said he'd either end up becoming a tool for the Darkness or...” But Dean couldn't continue his thought, and he leaned against the wall heavily to try and bolster himself up.

“Or _what_ , Dean?”

“Or he'd continue to serve as mine.”

Sam gaped at him. Dean could see him trying to come up with something to say and coming up empty. Eventually all he could manage was: “What?”

“He said he'd either end up becoming a tool for the Darkness _or he'd continue to serve as mine_.” There was a snarl in Dean's voice as he forced the words out from between his teeth. “He...he said that no one loves a hammer.”

“A hammer? What the hell does that even _mean_?”

Dean had somehow ended up in the chair across from Sam. He sat in it as though he resented it for holding him off the ground. “Back when we were all working together to stop the Seals from breaking, back before he fell, Cas once confessed to me that he had doubts about his orders.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” Dean did not look at Sam, but told his story into the middle distance. “I got pissed at him and called him a hammer once. You know, just a tool you pick up and use and then put down again. A blunt instrument. He said he wasn't one. He said he wasn’t a hammer, that he had doubts,” He laughed without humor. “I guess the image really stuck with him.”

“Wait, I don't understand,” Sam said. He sat back so far in his chair that it creaked in protest. “He thinks he's some kind of goddamned hammer for...for what? For you? So he just, what, goes back to the place that wrote the book on treating him as a tool? How does that make any sense? He went back to Heaven to _avoid_ being used?”

Dean nodded, a miserable, abortive gesture that was not aimed at anything in particular. “I guess, at least with Heaven he doesn't hope for anything better. He chose to go back up there, Sam. It was like it was his last great act of self-determination. Like...he was defying my plan for him the same way he defied Heaven's plan for the Apocalypse.”

“Seriously? We're worse than Heaven?” Sam asked. He had gone rather pale.“Dean, they _tortured him_. Like, many, many times over. How...how could he think they were preferable?”

“Like I said. He said no one loves a hammer. That's...how he sees himself in relation to us. In relation to me.” He took a breath to avoid screaming, and made himself say: “He said he'd finally learned his lesson. He said I'd taught him that. He fucking _thanked_ me for teaching him that lesson.”

“Dean,” Sam said slowly, and Dean could feel his brother studying his face. “What does that mean?”

“He didn’t tell you?” Dean asked, disbelieving. Sam shook his head.

Dean wanted, right at that moment, to get in his car and drive to the Kansas border, where the Darkness cleaved itself cleanly from the light, like smoke behind glass. He wanted to drive straight into it, step out and scream for it to just take him, already, Jesus Christ, end this. But he knew that it wouldn’t touch him, that it would pass right over and through him like he wasn’t even there. He knew, because he’d tried that already. The Darkness didn’t want him.

“I...” Dean began, struggling to frame what he needed to say in a way that didn’t sound quite so awful. But such a way didn’t exist, he knew. “I told him he’d screwed me over, after what happened with Charlie. I told him to leave, and he wouldn’t. He refused, because... he said he was my friend. He said...well, he said a lot of things. But he said he was never going to stop trying to save me. Because he was my friend. And I lost it, Sam. I just completely lost it.”

“Lost it how, Dean?”

“How do you think?” Dean asked, the old anger suddenly crackling like a spark from a dying ember. “What do you think I did, Sam? Take a wild goddamn guess.” He had grabbed the nearest thing to him, blindly, without thinking. It was an old book that Sam had left out. Dean looked down and realized he’d ripped the cover half off.

“You fought with him.” Sam reached out and took the book out of Dean’s hands, gingerly, as though he was still dealing with a cornered animal. It seemed to be his default setting these days, and Dean hated it.

“We didn’t _fight_.” Dean said. “He didn’t fight me. A fight would suggest two people actively participating. I beat him bloody. Like, just....” He threw his hands up, despairing , and looked away. “I heard bones snapping. I broke his nose for sure. If he was human there’s no way he would have survived. And he didn’t lift a finger to stop me. He didn’t take one damn swing. He just...let me. He just took the beating like it was what he expected from me. Like it was his job.”

“Oh.”

“’Oh’. Oh yeah. And Sam, that’s not the worst of it.”

“You don’t have to tell me any more, Dean.”

“Yes I fucking do.” Dean said, with a catch in his voice. “Sam, I was going to kill him. I had him on the ground and I could _feel_ it. I was going to stab him straight in the heart and walk away. There was no stopping it. I never wanted to do anything in my life more than I wanted to do that, right then.” The confession poured out of him, bitter as gall and hot as molten lead. He feared his throat would blister and dissolve from it.

“But you didn’t.” Sam said, after a long moment.

“I almost did. I brought that angel blade down and I really meant it. Just, at the last second—the _very last_ second—I couldn’t. I just...slammed it down next to him. Then I left him there, bleeding on the floor, and told him to stay the hell away from me.”

“He never said a word to me about this.”

“He probably figured you wouldn’t care.” Dean saw Sam wince at his words, but he didn’t try to deny them. “I told him that next time, I wouldn’t miss.” Dean realized that he’d started crying at some point during this exchange and could not bring himself to care. “Do you know what he said to me, as he was getting ready to go back up? He said...he said that my aim was true.” He scrubbed his hands over his eyes and tried to steady his breath.

Neither of them spoke for a while after this. Sam looked down at the ruined book in his hands and began trying to smooth the cover back into place. It would need re-binding. “So,” he said eventually, “I guess we _are_ as bad as Heaven. This whole year, I only called when I needed something. And I mean, I knew he was sick, I just...he never mentioned it, so I never thought about it. I told him to complete that spell and ended up breaking the world in the process. He said it wasn’t a good idea, and I ordered him to do it anyway. And you...well, you went all Lucifer’s Crypt on him because he said he was your friend and wasn’t giving up on you.”

“Yup.” Dean nodded into his hand, where its heel pressed heavily into his eye socket. “Do your duty when we tell you, and don’t complain. Say ‘no’, and get your ass kicked and told to leave. Sound familiar?”  Dean stood, so suddenly that Sam flinched. “And he forgave me, too. Can you believe that? God that just makes me feel worse.”

“Well, he’s an angel.”

“Yeah, exactly, he’s an _angel_. He’s supposed to be all wrath and fury and retribution. He should’ve just struck me down.”

“Dean, he’d never do that.”

“Yeah, and that’s the problem, right there.” Dean said, stalking back towards his room. “Fucking angelic devotion.”

“Have you prayed to him?”

Dean stopped dead. “What?”

“Have you tried praying?”

“Sam, have you heard a word I’ve said? Why on earth would I pray to the guy?”

“I dunno, just...maybe it would help.”

“Help what, Sam?”

“I don’t know...” Sam said, looking uncomfortable.

“I seriously doubt he wants to hear from me.”

“Maybe it would help you.”

“ _He left the earth because of me_ , Sam. I’m not going to ask him to help me get over missing him when I’m the reason he left in the first place.”  There was an admission in there, both of them knew, but neither acknowledged it.

“Dean...”

“No. Forget it.” Dean disappeared down the hallway and did not emerge from his room for the rest of the day.

The world was screwed in more predictable ways, as well, Dean realized the following morning. His conversation with Cas continued to echo in his head on an endless, tortuous loop, and he resolved to do something about it.

“Find us a case.”

“What?”

“A case. Find us a case. There’s bound to be something. People are flooding right left and center into this state since it seems to be the only place left standing. I’m gonna bet monsters will be close on their heels.”

“Actually, it’s not just Kansas,” Sam said, thoughtfully. “I’ve been trying to track this thing, and it’s leaving a wide berth around a few states, and around a bunch of countries across the world, too. It’s like it hits a wall or something. It just—stops.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know; I can’t figure it out yet. But there must be a reason.” Sam looked back to his laptop, where he’d begun compiling a dense and complicated set of data. He’d probably been there all night.

“Well, that’s great, but I need to focus on facing something I can actually kill right here and now or I’m going to go out of my damn mind.”

“Is that a good idea?” Sam asked in his careful, measured voice.

“Sam, the Mark is gone. I don’t want to kill shit because I’m being compelled to, okay? I want to save people. Do you remember when that used to be our job? I want to take out as many bad things as I possibly can to try and make up for being one of them. And spare me your protests, OK? We broke the world. If Cas can fix it, great; if we can fix it, great. In the meantime, I want to make sure we help any way we can. Make sure there are people left here if it _does_ get fixed.” He ran out of steam, his jittery energy ebbing away all at once. “And anyway...anyway, that’s what Cas told me to do. He didn’t want our help with whatever he’s doing Upstairs, so if this is the only way I can help him then, damn it, I will.”

“Alright, Dean, I get it. I do. Just...are you sure you’re up to it? You’re still recovering from a lot of heavy stuff.”

“If we can save even _one_ person, then yeah, Sam, I’m up for it.”

Sam nodded. “I’ll see what I can dig up."

Twelve hours later, they made their way to Wichita. The vampire nest never even stood a chance. With every one they felled, Dean found himself thinking of Castiel, wanting him to see and knowing that he wasn’t looking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This thing keeps growing exponentially longer and more involved._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _I don't actually have anyone to beta read my stuff, so if you catch any typos or anything, let me know so I can fix them._
> 
>  
> 
> _Next chapter, next week-ish._


	4. The Wheel of Fortune

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannah is the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I lied. This one was pretty short, so here's another chapter!_

Hannah could not heal his wings.

Castiel had barely made it out of the Pit, and had landed so violently in front of the Gate that he nearly dropped the soul he was carrying. He gripped it tighter and staggered his way back upstairs. He hadn’t said a word, just sought her out and ended up sinking to the floor before he could get his wits back together.

“Castiel? Where have you been? Are you alright?” Hannah asked, kneeling next to him.

Her concern for him was baffling. Not so long ago, he remembered, he’d broken in here against her orders and, because of him, Metatron had escaped. By rights, she should have him killed. He’d hoped that, by offering to go to battle, he’d at least earn a chance to put things right. She’d not only forgiven him, but seemed to still care about him, and it made no sense. He wondered briefly if there was some ulterior motive behind it, but he could not find one and, ultimately, he did not care.

“I’ve been to see the archangels,” Cas managed to gasp out.

“You returned to _Hell_?” Hannah recoiled slightly, but kept her hand—tanned and strong, where the previous one had been pale and delicate—on his shoulder. “But why? Were you injured?”

“It’s alright. I’m...I’m fine.”

But Hannah knew what that turn of phrase meant, and so she looked at him even more intensely. “Let me see.”

So Castiel did. Each wing unfurled as though it had rusted shut, making a sticky, tearing noise as it did. It was only with Hannah’s gentle coaxing that he could get them open enough for her to assess the damage. He didn’t have to look at her face to know how bad it looked. “I've healed them as much as I can,” Cas said quietly. “You don't have to do anything, Hannah. You've already done so much for me. I'll try again when I've recovered my strength.”

“This is...beyond my capacity to heal fully,” she said. Her voice was laced with sadness. “I only managed as much as I did last time because some of the feathers had started to grow back in, and I was able to encourage them along. Castiel, I cannot understand. You _had_ to know that you did not have another flight in you. To even attempt the trip _once_ was foolish. I regret agreeing to it.”

“Isn't there anything you can do?”

Hannah looked grave, her mouth drawn into a frown. “I can at least spare the remaining feathers and soothe the ache. If I was at full power, I could fix you completely, but like this... I am sorry.” Here she laid a hand on each wing, and a wave of healing grace rushed into them. Castiel sighed in relief.

“Hannah, no, don’t apologize. You’re already kinder to me than I deserve.” He stood, regaining his balance and composure.

“But why go down there again at all? For what purpose?”

“I told you. I went to speak to our brothers. I told them that I would be back, and I kept my word. In return, I got a token of good-will.” He held out the soul he’d been given, which he had pressed tight against himself, trying to smooth its ruined edges with his own grace and feeling it dig into him viciously in response. It was a familiar sensation, though he would not go so far as to say it was comforting.

Hannah’s eyes widened. “Is that the soul of...Michael’s vessel?” she asked. She’d meant to say “the Michael Sword”, Castiel knew, but that title belonged to a different person altogether. She took it from him with a mixture of hesitation and reverence.

“Yes. As I say, I demanded it as a token of faith, and Michael complied.”

“You went up to the Cage? You actually touched it?”

“I’ve done it before.”

Hannah blinked. “I thought that was just a rumor.”

“Where I'm concerned, most rumors are, unfortunately, true.” Castiel looked away for a moment and cleared his throat. “I’ll wait for you to see to the recovered soul, and then we can discuss the point of my visit to our brothers.”

“Oh. Yes, of course.” Hannah turned on her heel and disappeared down the long polished hallway. She returned empty-handed, saying: “They are working on restoring it now. I don’t know if they will be able to undo all of the damage, but I have instructed them to place it back in its rightful spot as soon as they are able.”

Castiel nodded, grateful, and felt the deep gouges where the Hell-fragments embedded in the soul had dug into him. Those would heal sooner or later. He did not mention them to Hannah. Instead he straightened his coat and squared his shoulders. “Hannah, we need the archangels.”

“ _What_? Castiel...no. I know we have not managed to come up with a workable plan yet, but we will. The Darkness can be beaten; we just have to figure out how.”

“The Darkness was beaten by _our Father and four archangels_ ,” Castiel said hotly. “Have you got four archangels hiding up here? Or maybe our bastard of a Father? If not, we are at a slight disadvantage in terms of weaponry. Or hadn't you noticed?” He took a breath and collected himself. “I'm sorry. That was—unnecessarily harsh. Forgive me. But the point remains: none of us now walking in Heaven were alive when that first war was fought. None of us have anywhere near the strength of an archangel. There are so few seraphs left, and those of us who remain are weakened. The other angels, the whole Host, are diminished.”  


Hannah looked at him with her dark, level gaze. “I know exactly how diminished we are Castiel, and I know why.”

He swallowed uncomfortably and looked away. “Hannah, I...as I have said, if you want me to do penance, you have only to name it.”

She shook her head. “No, it would be pointless. Penance achieves nothing and you would learn nothing. I would rather we learn from our mistakes than continue the eternal obedience-rebellion-penance cycle we have been on since we were created.”

“Yes. Of course,” he said, feeling her words land on him like a body blow. “And that is why I'm coming to you now, with this. There was a time when I'd see a strategic advantage and I would use it without hesitation, no matter how reckless. And there was a time when I'd make a deal out of desperation without seeking help or advice. We all know how well those turned out.”

“Castiel, I understand your uneasiness about our lack of strength, and your impatience about how long it's taking us to come up with a strategy, but you cannot truly believe that freeing Lucifer and Michael would be a good idea.”

“Not at all; it's probably one of the worst ideas I've had—and you know well how much competition there is in that area. But I do believe it is the only course of action open to us.”

“This is madness.” Hannah's voice had risen slightly. Her strong features were set hard as stone, and her eyes bored into his. Hannah's vessel was a kind-looking man, but looking at her now, all Castiel could see was the bloody, formidable soldier underneath.

“Hannah, of course it's madness. Darkness has again covered the earth—that is the very definition of the term. We are out of options. We have drawn up a dozen plans of attack, none of which we have the strength or the numbers to successfully mount. Nor, I would point out, the expertise, since none but the archangels know what it's like to actually beat this enemy.”

“But the Apocalypse was barely averted last time. The archangels bring only destruction in their wake.”

“The archangels _are_ destruction. As are we all. That's how we were made. But, Hannah, we _know_ better now. We can be better than that. We can learn from our mistakes.” Castiel felt a rising sense of desperation, pressing out painfully against his chest in an echo of the Hell wounds that pushed into him in angry red wheals. He caught his breath with some difficulty. He felt Hannah's hand on his arm again, calm and steadying, the fire of a moment ago extinguished. “Here is what I know: we are rapidly running out of time to defeat the Darkness and still leave enough of earth standing for anything to survive.”

“And what if I agree, Castiel? What if we free them and we win this war, what then? Allow them back into Heaven so that they can stage a coup? Let them re-assert the old ways? Let them re-start the Apocalypse you fought so hard to prevent?”

“If we don't act soon, there will be nothing to save at all. An Apocalypse is happening now. And you know as well as I do that when earth falls, Heaven will not be long behind it. We cannot hope to win this as we are. We cannot even hope to survive.” Castiel looked at her grimly. “Hannah, you're absolutely right to be worried. Everything you've said is a possibility, and I can't bear the thought of your good work here being ruined, of going back to how things were before.”

“But you have a plan.”

“Yes. I've spoken to Lucifer and Michael and told them that their release would be conditional. They will answer to you, and to me, if you'll allow it. I demand complete obedience—and no, of course I don't actually expect it, which is why I will adjure both of them myself.” Hannah opened her mouth to protest, but Castiel pressed on. “I know enough of Hell to make a binding contract. If they lie, if they go sideways even an inch, I will know about it, and I will throw them back into the Pit the instant we are done.”

"And if we succeed? If they fulfill their obligations without...going sideways?”

“They agree to leave and never return. They'll stake no claim on any realm in this dimension. They're trading one banishment for another. But I think, after all this time, they just want to get away from each other. They are both...” Castiel narrowed his eyes, searching for the phrase. “Complete dicks. It's hard to say who I dislike more.”

Hannah looked thoughtful for the first time in the whole exchange. But her voice was unsteady as she asked: “And if we fail?”

“Then it does not matter. If we fail we are all damned, and they would be better off where they are now.”

Hannah said nothing, but Castiel could feel her resolve slowly shift and he allowed himself to feel a flicker of hope. “I don't expect you to decide right now, but please, you must decide soon. We don't have time to waste. Everything else is bound to fail. This is almost certainly bound to fail, but at least there's a chance. We just—we don't have any more options that I can see. Every day that the Darkness remains free, it lays slow waste to Creation. Look for yourself, if you need proof. We have to do something drastic. We have to...we have to, uh, nuke it from orbit. So to speak.”

“I have no idea what that means, Castiel.”

“Never mind. Just...think on it, please. And let me know, soon.”

Hannah nodded, her eyes sketching some distant horizon only she could see. As she turned away, however, she asked, over her shoulder: “The good faith token they gave you, Castiel. Did they ask for anything in return?”

Castiel was glad that his back was turned, because though his voice was steady, he knew his face would betray him. “They did, but it was a trifle. It will cost Heaven nothing.”

“What was it?” He could hear the frown in her voice.

“Only that I keep my word.”

He walked rapidly away then, back towards the war room, with its great gleaming white dome, across which the whole universe was written. Looking at its glittering sprawl, he felt as though he was trying to read a book in a language he no longer knew. Its meaning skirted around the edge of his mind, almost, _almost_.

Castiel felt awestruck, even now, by the infinite beauty of its construction. But he found that his eyes were drawn—always, inexorably—to the tiny, hidden, inconsequential portion of it that held the earth. Metatron had not been wrong about him. He loved humanity. And he loved the earth: its great rivers and marvelous creatures, its teeming wilderness and its oceans. He had been stationed there for thousands of years. Of course he had grown to love it. How could he not? But humans confused him and enthralled him most of all: all of that chaotic, thriving, stubborn potential contained in each one of them, the capacity to define oneself, to define each moment, over and over and over again. An infinite rebirth, a chance to do better, to learn from your mistakes. If there was a handful that he loved more than the rest, well, he hoped he would be forgiven. If there was one he loved above all others, well, he did not really care if he was forgiven or not.

Hannah found him there, a long time later. He sat on the floor beside the table where the angels planned their wars, with face upturned. He did not hear her at first, so careful was her tread.

“Well?” Castiel asked, eyes still turned upwards towards the earth.

“Castiel. Understand this: we _must not_ fail.” _Please do not fail me_ remained unspoken.

“I understand.”

“Make the deal.”

Castiel nodded, his shoulders sagging in relief. “Thank you, Hannah. Thank you.”

“Do you have everything you need? This level of spellwork will be...taxing, from this distance.”

“I believe so. The Seals have already been opened once; it will be a matter of—picking the locks, now. I will need some time to gather my strength, but I should be ready to begin within the next day.”

“Very well. I hope this is the right choice, Castiel. For all our sakes, but especially for yours.”

“So do I.” Hannah helped him to his feet.

He had work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love the idea of Hannah running Heaven. As far as I can tell, she is 'just' a regular rank-and-file angel, a _malak_ , rather than an archangel or seraph. _Supernatural_ is pretty vague about its angelic hierarchy, but Hannah seems like the angelic everyman: a good soldier, as Cas says, but not a being created to lead. And yet by dint of her personality, her willingness to learn, her desire to improve things, she learns to BE a leader.
> 
> I've kept her in her latest male vessel, but continued using feminine pronouns. Gender is nonexistent when you're a giant wavelength. I discuss issues of consent for vessels later.


	5. Strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Winchesters kill things, come to a realization, and meet a fan.

They scoured Kansas for every possible supernatural creature they could find. Sam had been right. As the rest of the country descended into permanent night, people fled. And where people went, monsters followed.  Matters were made worse by the desperate conditions that gripped the state as its population doubled, and then trebled again in the course of a few short weeks. In the thirty two days since the Darkness rose, the metropolitan areas of Kansas began to resemble a natural disaster or a war zone.

Over and over, Dean was reminded of those few, unsettling days he had spent in an alternate, Croatoan-ridden 2014. He saw visions of his almost-self: hardened and callous, brutal and cold blooded—not unlike himself when he had borne the Mark, he had to admit. He saw Cas, burying the pain of his ruin in sex and drugs and resignation, but still unfailingly loyal. Dean had sent him to die, and Cas had gone willingly. “Of course,” he'd said. Of course, of course.

Dean remembered the looks on the faces of the survivors in Chitaqua, for he saw them now looking back at him everywhere they went. No one expected the end of the world to take so long. No one knew what to do when it lingered.  Many were bewildered, hurling prayers and pleas to whatever deities might be left alive to hear them. Some had that thousand-yard stare and hair-trigger temper that he remembered so well.  But most were just marking time. There was an odd listlessness to so many of the people they came across, even the military personnel, that Dean found it unsettling. It was as though they were slowly being hollowed out from the inside, rusting away silently, just as their cars did where they stood. Dean had expected more hassle; he'd been prepared for someone to try and take the Impala, or maybe to try and rob them. He half expected people to know, somehow, that he was the one who had brought this down on their heads and to fall on him like a pack of wolves, baying for blood. But no one did.

In the end, he and Sam took to siphoning gas from the abandoned cars, and no one tried to stop them.

They staggered back home to the bunker after tangling with a particularly vicious ghoul at a morgue in Topeka. There had been a job almost every day; sometimes there had been more than one. Sam had urged Dean to rest. The monsters, he pointed out, were just as trapped here as everyone else. But Dean couldn't bear the thought of sitting still when there was something he could actually _do_ , for once. Helplessness gnawed at him, an ache he felt down to his marrow, and he drove himself mercilessly forward in an effort to relieve it. Finally, Sam had to insist for his own sake, because he could barely keep his eyes open and his knees threatened to buckle from exhaustion.

“You sleep,” Dean said, “I'll try and find us another case. We can head out again in the morning.”

 “Dean, no. We _both_ need sleep and you know it. We're running on fumes, and we're getting sloppy.” Sam peeled off his shirt. It was stiffened with blood and grime and resembled a flayed skin more than a piece of clothing. He was too thin, Dean noticed, and he had picked up a set of nasty bruises around his ribs. “That nocnitsa in Junction City nearly had me,” he said, gesturing towards the green and purple marks, “Because I was so tired I fell asleep on the job, and _you_ were so tired you almost didn't get there in time.”

It was the most they had spoken to each other in days—an almost normal conversation despite the subject matter. Occasionally, while driving to or from hunts, Dean could see Sam from the corner of his eye, glancing towards him hesitantly. He wore a look on his face that meant that he wanted to talk about something but didn't know how to start. Dean knew that expression. It was an expression that said: _Please, look at me so I know you're ready to hear me._ But Dean never looked. He just kept his eyes on the road and made Sam repeat the details of the case, or list their remaining inventory, or what job he had lined up next. And Sam had never pressed, just knitted his brows together for a moment and answered his questions.

“Alright, alright,” Dean said, trying and failing to stifle a yawn. “We'll get a few hours shut-eye, then we can regroup.” He nearly fell asleep in the shower, as the warmth and white noise slowly undid the knotted tension of his over-exerted muscles. Blood ran from him in black-red rivulets down the drain. Some of it was his own. There was so much of it; he thought briefly of the plagues of Egypt, and then laughed at how easy those had been by comparison. Amateur hour, really.  He felt like he would never be clean again. He slid down the wall and closed his eyes for a moment. By the time he opened them again, jerking awake with a gasp, the water ran clear and cold.

In the end, they did not find another job the following day. The lack of sleep and proper food had taken a toll, and Dean was still recovering. He felt the kind of exhaustion that came not from honorable combat or a hard hunt, but from long and lingering illness: sapping, insidious, pervasive. He alternated between sleeping (fitfully, it must be said) and slowly trying put the wreckage of his room back together. Everything seemed to take slightly more energy than he had to give.

He wondered if he was getting old.

Hunger finally drove him from his room almost two days later. Getting dressed took an hour. Each button felt like a station of the cross, but he managed it, in the end, and made his way to the kitchen in search of something that would ease his hunger. Sam had mentioned rationing their supplies, if only to avoid having to break out the MREs until absolutely necessary, but he needed protein, he needed calories, and he needed to feel like a regular damn human being for once.

Sam found him putting together a spread of sandwiches that would feed a church picnic. He looked at them briefly, eyebrow raised, and then ate three of them in quick succession. “So, get this,” he said, between bites, “You remember when I said it wasn't just Kansas that was unaffected?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I looked again at the map and made a list of each state that's been Darkness-free so far. Then I went and made a list of everything I knew about each state: cases we've worked, most common monster sightings, hunters we know, famous landmarks, hell, even the hotels we've stayed at.”

“Must've taken you all night.”

“Yeah, well. I, uh... haven't been sleeping too well lately.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, the point is, I think they're all connected.”

“What do you mean? Connected how?” Dean had finished his sandwiches and was contemplating raiding the larder for something else. God, what he wouldn't give for a decent steak or a bowl of lo mein or something. He thought wistfully of those taquitos he'd made in that dilapidated Mexican restaurant, then remembered why he tried not to.

“Well, let me give you a few of the states and tell me if you notice a pattern.”

“Ugh, fine, hit me.” Dean opened the refrigerator and eyed its contents critically.

“OK, so, Kansas, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“But there's also a dozen others, including New Mexico, Montana, Michigan, and Missouri.”

“So, what states that mostly start with the letter 'M'?”

 _“No_ , Dean. What do all of those states have in common? Who do we know that had a presence in each of those places? Remember? We talked about this after St. Louis.”

Dean thought for a moment, eyes scanning back and forth as he continued to stoop over and stare into the refrigerator. Then, suddenly, he straightened.

“The Men of Letters. There are chapters of the Men of Letters in each one of those states.”

“Yes, exactly.” Sam said, excitedly. “I looked up the addresses of the other chapters, too, and every single untouched state holds a Men of Letters bunker or chapter house. Or almost.”

“Holy shit, really? You think they're keeping it away somehow? Spellwork, maybe? Warding?” Dean forgot his unsated stomach, his mind racing as he tried to work through the set of possibilities that this new information presented.

Sam shook his head. “I'm not sure. I can't tell if they're keeping it away, or if something is holding it back from them. It's weird, though. It follows state lines so clearly it's like someone drew a line with a razor blade. It's the same elsewhere, too. Slovenia, Great Britain, Algeria, almost two dozen countries around the world—untouched. Like someone's just put a wall up around them. I mean, I don't know yet where all of the Men of Letters chapters were based, but I'm willing to bet that, wherever the Darkness stops, you'll find them.” Sam paused. “The only place that doesn’t fit the pattern is Maryland. There’s no Men of Letters presence there that I can see. It’s undarkened, but it’s not...the border isn’t as surgically clean as all the other places. But I’ll have a look through the files again and see if I missed a mention of a chapter house in Maryland. Maybe it got shut before everything went down with Abaddon?”

“So there’s an outlier,” Dean said. “At least the people there are safe. Let’s focus on the pattern we can see, right?” Dean ran his hands through his hair, feeling at once buoyed and overwhelmed. If it was the bunker keeping the Darkness from swallowing up Kansas, then maybe there was something within its walls that could be used to drive it away completely. But then...if it was warding or spellwork, how long would it hold? And what was it? What if they couldn't be extended any further? What if it could?

And then...what if, like Sam had said, it wasn't the Bunker holding it back at all? What if it was something ( _Or someone_ , Dean thought) keeping it away from them? But why? What ( _Or who_ ) would have the power to command something as all-consuming and amoral as the Darkness? And if they were powerful enough to stop it from spreading at will, why would they just let it cover the rest of the earth?  Why spare the Men of Letters' strongholds? What use could they have for them? Who......

_Oh._

“Sam,” Dean said, hearing his heart beating hard in his ears, a thunderous thud-and-hiss that repeated and repeated, threatening to drown out his thoughts. He steadied himself against the counter and looked, wild-eyed, towards his brother. “Sam, what if it's Rowena?”

Sam blinked. “What?”

“ _Rowena_. You know, Crowley's absolute mother of a mother. Evil, red hair, Scottish accent.”

“I know who she _is_ , Dean.” Sam leaned against the counter next to Dean, studying him with an intense focus that he had not shown in weeks. “What makes you think it's her?”

“Well, you said yourself. I didn't see any of the books when I was at that warehouse, so she got away with the Book of the Damned, and the Codex and Charlie's decryption. If anyone's got the inside scoop on controlling this thing, it's her. And Cas said that, as soon as she performed the spell to remove the Mark, her powers seemed to go all turbo-charged. That's how she was able to get away in the first place, never mind being able to put an attack dog spell on an angel.”

“She put an attack dog spell on Cas? Wait...is that what happened to Crowley?”

“Not important right now, Sammy.” Dean was staring into the middle distance, feeling piece after piece of a puzzle click into place in his head. “She said the Men of Letters stole the Grand Coven's knowledge and their artifacts, right? She was dead set on finding this place and taking it back for herself, wasn't she? What if she's keeping the Darkness away from these places so she can finally do that?”

Sam said nothing for a few moments, looking down towards his feet, deep in thought. Finally he looked up and said: “You know what, Dean, I think you might be right. Dammit. All this time I've been trying to think of a way to fight the Darkness itself and it didn't even occur to me that there might be someone else at play here.”

“Right. Witches. _God_ , I hate them. But at least we know how to deal with them, right?”

“Well, sort of. She doesn't strike me as your average run-of-the-mill witch, Dean.”

“Still, it's a start.” Dean felt a tiny ember of hope lodge itself in his heart and he wanted so badly to let it catch. But he took a breath and checked himself. “Not a great start, I know, but a start.” He stretched extravagantly, feeling his joints pop and crack as though they were moving for the first time in years. He almost didn't feel tired. “Now, you say there's other states that haven't been hit? Bet you anything there are hunters there who could use our help. Maybe we could hit up the Men of Letters hideouts while we're lending a hand. We already know where the St. Louis branch is, maybe we could start there. I don't know about you, but I could use a field trip.”

“I'll see what I can dig up.”

****

They left under cover of night for Missouri. The sky was deep black and covered with a faint scrim of clouds, but what Dean noticed were the stars. The moon was a thin crescent, a sliver of silver, sharp as an angel blade, but the stars blazed blue-white, their cold glitter belying the fire that burned in each one. It was still unseasonably cool, and their breaths were visible in the dappled half-light as they climbed into the car. Dean revved the engine, and the noise shook free a host of little bats and several owls, small frantic shadows in the gleam of the headlights.

They passed a sprawling tent city on the bank of a small river. Sam suspected that it was overflow from the refugee centers that had been set up in local schools, which had quickly been overwhelmed with the influx of new arrivals. The further they drove towards Missouri, though, the emptier the back country landscape became. Missouri was undarkened, and so its residents felt no need to run, not yet. They passed over the state border without seeing another human being. Ahead, the sky bled pale pink into blue, a beautiful summer sunrise.

By the time they reached St. Louis, it was full daylight, the sky so blue and clear that it seemed almost _perverse_. They had skirted the city proper, though it  added hours to the journey. Neither saw the point of coming up against the presence of either the military or a militarized police force, both of which St. Louis had. Martial law had been declared for much less; they did not relish the idea of witnessing what happened during the end of days.  They found an abandoned gas station, which had already been stripped of most of its valuable fixtures, and grabbed as much of the remaining food and water from the stockroom as they could. Neither commented on the weeks-old blood trail that started behind the counter and spattered its way out of the smashed front door. Dean thought again of Detroit, and found himself instinctively checking for Croats every few seconds, but it was clear that this place had been hit by human beings.  He managed to coax out just over half a tank of gas from the three pumps that still worked, and they drove on.

Sam had bolted and warded the St. Louis chapter house closed after he'd retrieved the Codex. So it was with some measure of surprise that they noticed obvious signs of habitation as they pulled up to it that afternoon. The neighborhood itself was quiet, with lawns overgrown and litter strewn in the streets. All the curtains were drawn. On day as bright and lovely as this one, Dean would have expected to hear the sounds of kids playing, or music wafting from an open window, of the low dragonfly hum of lawn mowers—any sign of typical suburban life. But everything was still and eerily quiet. The only sounds Dean could hear were the faint whistling of the wind through phone wires, and, somewhere, the rusty squawk of a gate rocking open and closed. It was as though the whole place was holding its breath.

“Should we go in, or wait and see who comes out?” Sam asked. His unease was palpable. “I warded the hell out of that thing, Dean. Not to mention all the other wards the Men of Letters had already put into place. Nothing should have been able to get in there.”

“Well, at least we know whatever's in there is probably human, then.” Dean climbed out of the front seat,  hiding his gun in the waistband of his jeans, and made his way cautiously through the knee-high grass. He could feel Sam follow him a few feet away, before he peeled off and headed towards the back of the house.

Dean stepped as noiselessly as he could onto the porch and put his ear to the door. The house was silent, and Dean debated knocking, before thinking the better of it and trying the knob. It was unlocked, and opened with a gentle creak. In the heartbeat it took Dean to decide whether or not this was a bad sign, a hand shot out from the dark, dragged him inside by his shirt front and slammed the door behind him. He reached for his gun, but the sudden shift from daylight to pitch black temporarily blinded him, and he could not see what to aim for.

Whoever had grabbed him now pinned him against the wall, face pressed painfully against the wallpaper, and a voice hissed in his ear: “Man, you sure picked the wrong house to loot.” He was just about to retaliate, to reduce his assailant to a pile of fractured bones and bloody meat, when the words hit him.

“What? Wait, no. I'm not here to loot! I'm here to...to look for help.” His gun had dropped to the floor, and he put his hands up slowly, palms flat against the wall. How long would it take Sam to pick the lock out back and get in here? How many other people were there in this house?

“Bullshit. You wouldn't go to some random suburban house to look for help. You want help, go to one of the military checkpoints.”

OK, fair point.  Whoever it was—the voice was female, and the body was several inches shorter than him, though Christ they were strong—had the barrel of a gun pressed into the small of his back.

“That's not the kind of help I'm after.” He took a breath. “I need the help of the kind of person who can recognize and break through the kind of spellwork that this building has.”

The pressure of the gun muzzle eased slightly, for which Dean was glad. He could feel a bruise forming.

“What?”

“You're a hunter, right? That's how you got through the spellwork protecting this building? That's impressive, by the way. Sam put a bunch of really hardcore stuff on here. You must really know what you're doing.”

The gun fell away completely, but Dean didn't allow himself to turn around just yet.

“Sam? Who the hell is S—“ But the rest of the sentence was swallowed up by a crash and a series of  grunts and expletives, as Dean's unknown attacker met Sam by way of rugby tackle to the ground.

Dean whirled around to see Sam pinning down a woman of about thirty, training his gun at her forehead with a ferocious look on his face.

“Sam, don't! She's a hunter. She thought we were here to rob her.”

Sam broke his eye contact and looked up at Dean, and in a series of movements he couldn't quite follow, the woman had batted Sam's gun away and slithered out from underneath him, planting a knee in his groin as she did. She sprang to her feet and Dean could clearly see the word _murder_ forming behind her eyes. But she did not go for her gun, just stood staring at them defiantly.

“Who. Are. You.”

“I'm Dean, and this is my brother, Sam,” Dean said, helping Sam to his feet while continuing to look at woman in front of him. “We're hunters, just like you.”

Something changed in her demeanor almost immediately.

“Dean. And Sam,” she said, slowly, her dark eyes widening as she tasted the words on her tongue.

“As in, the Winchesters?”

Dean smiled a little, in spite of himself. “In the flesh. I guess our reputation precedes us?”

“You're taller than I pictured you from the books.”

“From...the....” Dean trailed off, paling slightly.

“Wait, you've read the _Supernatural_ books?” Sam said, wincing as he straightened up fully. Her knee had made pretty solid contact.

“Well, yeah, obviously. It's a series of books about actual hunters going on hunts for actual monsters. None of this sparkling vampire boyfriend crap. They're pretty useful, truth be told, despite being terribly written. My old hunting partner used to laugh at me for reading them; said they were trashy novels for teen girls. And I mean, I guess they are, kinda. But, you know, who cares?  A lot of good info in there if you don't mind all the sex and the.... _feelings_. He's the one that told me the books were based on real people. I guess he knew your dad? Or at least he knew of him. Used to frequent the same roadhouse, he said.”

All the defensiveness had left her posture and she was smiling at them with a glint in her eye. A glint, Dean decided, that he did not like one bit. “But, can I just say, I couldn't figure out why the author sent you to Hell, Sam. I didn't understand the metaphor. I mean, what was that supposed to represent?”

“Uh, Hell.”

“What?”

“It represents Hell,” Sam said, pushing the hair back from his eyes and handing her back her weapon. “Because, uh, that's where I went. Straight into—straight into Lucifer's Cage.”

None of them spoke for several long seconds.

“But I don't understand. How are you here, then?”

“It's a long story,” Dean interjected. Sam was clearly trying to come up with an explanation that wouldn't take hours, and Dean knew he wouldn't have any luck. “Like, a really long story. We'll tell you about it sometime."

“Was it angels? Angels are real, right? That wasn't a metaphor? My partner thought it was a metaphor.”

“Uh...” Sam said. "Yeah. Yeah, angels are real."

“Wait, wait, wait. Was it Castiel? _Please_ tell me it was Castiel.”

“Um,” Dean said, glancing nervously at Sam. “Well, yeah, kind of. He was...involved in a lot of it. Really involved, actually.”

“Man, I love angels. They're such _dicks_. Nice subversion of the trope. Well, I guess he's not such a dick, but you know what I mean.” She was smiling now, a sly little expression that lit up her face. She ran her hand through her short black hair, thinking, then looked at Dean. “Is he here?”

Dean swallowed. “No, he...he's back up in Heaven. He had to go because, um..” Dean faltered suddenly, and she seemed to catch it instinctively, her face dropping into a serious, gentle expression he had not expected.

“It's a long story?”

“Yeah.”

"Okay. Well, maybe you'll tell it to me some other time.” She held out her hand to them both, radiating amiability. “I'm Elle. Now, tell me, what can I do to help?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I love Team Free Will, but it's kind of a sausage fest, to use youth's colorful vernacular. Don't worry, Elle is not a love interest for anyone (oh boy, she is not) but she has a particular set of skills that will come in handy later. Plus, I like her. In my head, she looks like Toast the Knowing from Mad Max--but of course, she does not have to look that way in yours._   
>  _As always, if you notice anything in the way of typos or grammatically tortuous sentences, please let me know. Likewise, if there's anything you want to discuss, feel free!_   
>  _Working on the TFW reunion right now. This story is kind of breaking my brain, but I hope you're enjoying it!_


	6. The Chariot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go dark for a while, and someone reappears.

The St. Louis house turned up nothing related to the Book or the Codex, though they searched it from top to bottom. The basement, which Sam had not had time to search properly on his last visit, yielded a variety of potentially-useful ingredients and objects. Each discovery seemed to delight Elle.

“Look,” Dean said, eyeing her carefully, “If you're a witch, you should know something. If I find even one suggestion of a hex bag anywhere, I will end you.”

“I'm not a witch, you dick,” Elle spat back with considerable venom. “You telling me you never use spells in your hunts? What the fuck do you think an _exorcism_ is? Just a bunch of fancy words? You said yourself you covered this place in enough warding to stop an army. I just happen to be very good at this part of the job. Just because I'm a woman and I know what the hell I'm doing doesn't make me a goddamned witch, alright? At least, not the kind you mean.”

“Alright, alright, jeeze. I'm sorry.”

“Good. Now, go put these in the car. These are restoratives. They can be useful for healing, and you two don't seem to carry anything other than a field medic kit which is...an interesting choice, given your line of work. Oh! And these, too. You can never have enough reagents.”

Finally, when every loose tile and floorboard, every shelf and cupboard had been ransacked, they agreed they should move on.

“The closest chapter house to us is in Ohio. Near a place called Lebanon, if you can believe it. I guess they liked the symmetry,” Sam said. He looked at the map, frowning a little. “Normally we'd be there in under five hours, but we have to cut through Indiana, which has gone dark. That's going to slow us down considerably. Too bad the Men of Letters didn't think to put chapters in every state, huh.”

“So your Men of Letters pillaged a bunch of covens for useful items and decided to lock it all up for themselves?” Elle asked, stretching her legs across the back seat of the Impala. She didn't seem to feel the cold at all, and had shed her shoes about ten minutes after settling in.

“Yeah, sort of,” Sam said, almost sheepish.

“Rude.”

“But, witches, man...”

“Still rude, Dean. You can't be all Robin Hood about stealing for the greater good when you don't actually let anybody use your loot.”

“Yeah, okay, they were kind of dicks,” Dean conceded with a sigh. “They were anti-hunter, too. Anti-witch. Anti-everyone-but-themselves, really.”

Elle let her head fall against the backrest, looking out into the gold-vermillion sky.

“I've got to say, it's so nice to be able to carry on a conversation with other people,” she said, her voice suddenly soft. “I haven't had anyone to talk to since...well, in a while. I thought my vocal cords must be rusted.”

“You've been alone in that house the whole time?” Sam asked, glancing at her in the rear view mirror. He saw her shake her head.

“No, I came across it only a week or so ago. It was the warding that drew my eye, you know. Really stellar work.” She smiled over at Sam. “I had...I had been on a hunt that went south pretty badly,” she said, and it was obvious that she was picking her words carefully. “A vampire. Just the one. No nest that I could find. First one I'd dealt with in several years. But it seemed straightforward enough, once we'd tracked it down.”

“We?” Sam asked, gently.

“Um. Yes, we. My partner and I. Dale Isherwood. Ish was a top-notch tracker, good shot, but absolute crap at hand-to-hand.” She swallowed thickly and looked anywhere but at them.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she said, with a dispirited quirk of the mouth. “I mean, we didn't hunt together all the time, but when I got wind of this one, I figured Ish'd be up for it. Ever since this apocalypse bullshit started up, we’d been hunting right, left and center, but mostly on our own. To cover more ground, you know? We were both exhausted, and I thought, well, it would be good to work together again on something easy, take some of the strain off.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, softly, “I know that feeling.”

“Anyway,” she said, with a false cheerfulness that Dean found awful to hear, “After the vamp fiasco, I needed somewhere to lay low and regroup. So as soon as I saw that house, I knew I had to get in there. Thank god the cops have got other fish to fry right now, because someone like me breaking into a nice suburban house would normally cause all kinds of headaches.” She smiled at them, then. “I guess all this is good for something, huh.”

“I'm glad you were able to get in there,” Sam said quietly.

“Me too, Sam. Me too.”

None of them spoke for a while, each one lost in their own hazy bubble of thought, but the silence was companionable, and Dean realized how much he liked having other hunters—competent, tough, no-nonsense hunters—around. There was an instant level of camaraderie that he could not find with anyone else. He felt his heart clench a little as he went down this line of thought, and quickly sought  something else to think about.

“So, Elle, how long have you been hunting?”

“Mmm? Um, about four and a half or five years now. I can't remember exactly.”

“Really? That's not that long. Most people start a lot younger.”

“The family business, I get it. But no, I was a late bloomer. A haunting at a farm where I was working. I'd read a couple of those _Supernatural_ books already and I thought 'what the hell, why not try it and see if it works'. What do you know, it did.” She beamed at them, and again got that glint in her eye that Dean found slightly unnerving. “Ish rode in to save the day but I'd already beaten him to the punch. Man, you should have seen his face.”

“Wait, if you started hunting after you found the books, how'd you read them in the first place?” Sam asked.

“Oh,” Elle said, sobering suddenly. Her moods were mercurial, changing from sun to rain between one breath and the next. “Are you trying to unlock my tragic backstory?”

"Sorry,” Sam mumbled. “You don't have to tell us.”

“No, it's only fair. I mean, I know a _lot_ about you two.” She tipped her head back again, watching the first stars that appeared overhead. “I was in the hospital for...a long time. In a coma, actually. I came to unexpectedly six or so years ago.” She shrugged. “No one could explain it. But I just popped up, like a daisy. Or, well, not like a daisy, I guess. It took me a while to walk and talk again. I never did get my memory back.”  
“What do you mean?” Dean asked.

She sighed. “I don't...I don't really have any memories of my life before I woke up in that hospital. Nobody ever came to visit, nobody ever came to identify me, so I didn't have anybody to ask. I had to start over from scratch. I'm a self-made woman.”

“So you named yourself?” Sam asked, twisting around a little to look at her better, to show her that he was paying attention.

“Mmm. Yeah, after one of the magazines in the waiting room. One of the first words I was able to read.” She laughed, a short bark of a sound that seemed too loud in the car. “Man, I could've been Cosmo! What a missed opportunity.”

“Elle's a nice name,” Dean said, hoping to sound encouraging. She narrowed her eyes at him, but then she winked.

“Thanks. I mean, I wasn't lying about the magazine part, but I don't know...they'd been throwing names at me for days and nothing sounded right to me. But 'Elle'—that did for some reason. That's where I found your books, too. They were in the reading room. I devoured them. When I found out there were more I tracked them all down.” She yawned expansively, her energy clearly drained by the excitement of the day and the weight of the tale she'd been telling. “So, I decided to, uh...find myself. When I got out of the hospital in Las Cruces, I hitchhiked to the east coast. I got a job on an apple farm in upstate New York. Hard work, and not very glamorous. But  nice people, and just what I needed at the time. Ghost, Ish, hunting, you know the rest.”

“And now you're here with us, riding toward the end of the world,” Dean said, “Lucky you.”

“Lucky me.” He glanced back into the mirror again, expecting to see her rolling her eyes, but she had lolled down on to the seat and curled up like a cat. In a few minutes, she was asleep.

The Darkness loomed like a wall as they neared the Indiana border. Dean felt his stomach drop as they drew near, but there was no checkpoint to stop them. The last few miles around the border had been utterly deserted as people flooded inward. He was tempted to stop the car, to take a couple of calming breaths, to rationalize what they were doing. Instead, he floored it.

At once, the stars winked from existence and the sound of the engine was swallowed up, as though they were driving through an anechoic chamber. The road beneath the Impala was crisscrossed with black tendrils, and he could feel the road buckling where the Darkness had made contact, like it was slowly eating away at the asphalt. The light took on that sickly greenish tint and the windows fogged up from the sudden drop in temperature. Still, though, as always, no creeping black web floated its way to them, and the Impala cut through the drowned world like a bullet.

Dean's knuckles were bone white against the steering wheel and he knew without looking that Sam's face was drawn tight with apprehension. Incongruously, Elle remained peacefully asleep, which was probably for the best. Dean felt that strange, familiar sensation in his gut—the feeling he got when he crested a large hill at speed, and floated, weightless, for a moment, before gravity reasserted itself. He knew that this feeling would last the entire drive through Indiana. He hoped he wouldn't be sick. To pass the time, he tried to carry on a conversation with Sam, though what it was they talked about, he couldn’t actually say. Occasionally, Sam would shoot him a startled glance from the corner of his eye, before staring straight ahead again and saying...something. What had he said?

“It didn’t come for me, either, Dean. It wouldn’t touch me. When you were in that warehouse? I got out of the car to throw up, and it didn’t even touch me.” Sam’s voice was flat and far away, like an old record, playing at the far end of a long hallway. Dean tried to follow it. What did that mean? What was he saying? It was there at the edge of his mind.

_Just drive._

The lack of visibility slowed them down. What should have taken three hours (or two, if Dean drove in his usual manner) took over five. Finally, though, finally, they could see the glimmer of sodium-yellow lights in the distance, the waxing sickle of the moon in the pre-dawn. The Impala sailed across the state line, its engine roaring to life as it shook off the muffling effects of the Darkness. Dean felt gravity push down on him gently, the awful free-floating feeling dissolving. Suddenly, he could hear. Suddenly he could think. And what had they been discussing? Something important. Hadn’t they been discussing something? He shook his head.

_Just drive._

The plan was to take the old state road down and then cut across towards Lebanon, relying on back roads, thereby avoiding highways and major roads and the inevitable military checkpoints that would come as they neared anything resembling a city. It was full daylight by the time they got close to their destination, tipping slowly into the afternoon. They had only stopped once, to relieve themselves in a copse of trees and to consume a joyless collection of calories in the form of a MRE (meatloaf, it claimed, though Dean was reminded uncomfortably of brains). Otherwise, Dean drove onward, ignoring the occasional sputter that the engine had acquired since driving through Indiana.

Twenty miles from their destination, though, the car died. Dean swore loudly and violently, opening the hood up with a curse. He had to jump out of the way as a vicious jet of steam escaped. “Damn it! It’s vapor locked. I didn't realize I was pushing her so hard.” He slammed his hand down on the front bumper with such force that his hand went numb. “Fucking _typical_ ,” Dean muttered, attempting to rub away the pins and needles that blossomed in his palm. “We'll just have to wait for her to cool down. I can get some water in her and speed things along but we're going to be stuck here for a while. Plus, we need more gas. Coolant, too, I bet.”

“There was a motel about half a mile back,” Elle offered. She peered curiously around him at the innards of the Impala. They were giving off a furnace-like heat, but she didn't seem terribly fazed. “We can push it there and see if we can snag ourselves some rooms.”

“You really think anything'll be open?” Dean asked irritably.

“Well, if it's open we can pay for our rooms like good, upstanding citizens, and if it's not we can break in and use them like vandals and thieves.” She gave him a companionable pat on the arm.

“She has a point, Dean. You've been driving non-stop all day, and we're going to need to sleep sometime. Plus, I am starving.”  
“What are you talking about? We brought provisions.” 

“Beef jerky and Skittles isn't exactly the breakfast of champions. Or the dinner, or the lunch. And I’m not eating any more MREs unless I absolutely have to.”

“Ugh, fine. Let's go.” Dean was unfeasibly irritated, he knew, but it galled him to be so close to their goal and be defeated by something like an overheated engine block. _Story of my life_ , he thought, as the three of them began to shoulder the gleaming bulk of the Impala back in the direction from which they had come.

The sky was slowly deepening to hazy blue-gold as they staggered to the motel, sweat-and-grease slicked and utterly exhausted.

The motel, it turned out, was actually open. It was featureless and plain, and peeling at the edges, but it was the lone sign of normal civilization that any of them had seen in days.

Well, Dean reflected, not exactly normal civilization, since the man behind the desk had waved a shotgun at him as he walked in. Some detached part of Dean's brain supplied the description of “militant Santa impersonator” as he took in the gray weeks-old beard and Army surplus wardrobe.  
“We're not here to loot you, I swear.” Dean raised his hands and smiled in what he hoped was a non-threatening way. “We just want two rooms 'til tomorrow. Okay? Just two rooms for the night, then we'll be out of your hair. We'll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

Eventually, Dean's reassurances seemed to sink in, and the man behind the counter lowered his weapon and looked him over with slightly less crazed eyes.

“Cash only.”

“Yeah, okay, that's cool. I can pay cash. How much?”

“Five hundred.”

“Five hundred _dollars_?” Dean asked in disbelief. “For two rooms in this fleabag place? For _one night?”_

“I could make it six hundred. You don't like it? The only other place open is thirty miles east of here. But judging by the way you look, I'm going to guess you've had car trouble.”

Dean considered, briefly, knocking the guy out and leaving him tied up in the staff room. The idea appealed to him more than he cared to admit. But he had spent his life ripping people off for the greater good, and so he figured it was perhaps only fair that this time, he was getting ripped off for the same reason. He smiled and slapped the cash down on the counter, and smiled some more as he snatched the keys from the man's hand. He hoped the other guy could read _I'm stabbing you in my mind_ clearly, because he was broadcasting it as loudly as he could without saying it.

“Right, I’m going to grab a shower and pass out for a couple hours.” Dean announced, handing a key to Elle. “I can't take being conscious for much longer.”

“We're going to go look for some gas and some food,” Elle said, glancing back at Sam, who was wrestling a gasoline canister out of the back. “We'll bring you back something if we find anything.”

“Great.” Dean shuffled his way to their room and closed the door behind him with a click. The lights worked, but only just, brightening and dimming in a way that suggested that the power plant that supplied them was on its way out. He dropped his bag on the bed and headed to the bathroom, praying to every deity he could name that the shower still worked. But it was not his lucky day. Nothing came out but a sad, tepid trickle. “Great.”

He settled for running a bath. The water pressure was marginally better, and slightly warmer, too, so at least he had a chance of getting cleaned up sometime within the next day. He sat down on the bed and wrested the shoes and socks from his feet, then shuffled off his coat and outer shirt. He sat for a moment, listening to the background hiss of the running water and watching the lights flicker like an erratic heartbeat. It was the first time he had been alone in months, the first time since, since...

A knock on the door startled him out of his reverie. Sam wouldn't knock, and he doubted Elle would either. _This better not be the asshole from the front desk wanting more money_ , Dean thought, sidling up to the door with caution. There was no spyhole, so he carefully cocked his gun, took a breath, and cracked open the door. Then he lost the breath he had just taken in, as though it had been punched out of him.

There he was: Castiel, ( _Former?_ ) angel of the Lord and ( _Former?_ ) best friend of Dean Winchester, standing under the failing halo of an overhead light of some two-bit motel in rural Ohio. Because of course he was, of course he was.

“Hello, Dean. May I come in?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Cas, you seriously cannot stay away, can you?_   
>  _Also, chapters just keep going and going because people will **not** stop talking to each other. If only they did that on the actual show._   
>  _Hope you're enjoying, to whatever degree seems appropriate to you._


	7. The Sun, The Moon, The Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get a little violent. Metatron is a dick.

Dean stepped back as though he'd received a shock. Words failed him, as they so often did these days. But Cas made no move towards him, and just stood, as though carved from stone.

“May I come in?” Dean barely took the words in, forgetting momentarily how language worked. Cas looked exactly the same as he had when he'd said goodbye, and for some reason that made it seem all the more unreal. Dean felt as though he were hallucinating him; it wouldn't be the first time. He didn’t know why he expected him to look different. It had been just over two weeks since he'd last seen Cas, but time had seemed to behave strangely since then, dilating and constricting like a dying star. Dean felt as though years had passed, not days. Time did not seem to be behaving normally now, either, because the silence between them stretched out and warped and Dean was sure he'd been staring at those blue eyes for hours now without speaking.

“Dean, may I come in, please?” Cas asked again, without getting annoyed.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah,” Dean said, and his voice was like sandpaper to his own ears. “Come in.”

Cas stepped over the threshold, one long, purposeful stride, then another, until he was standing right in the middle of the floral nightmare of a room. Dean closed the door behind him and backed up against it as though he'd been cornered. Belatedly he realized that he was blocking Cas' only means of exit, and stepped away.

“I apologize for...appearing unannounced,” Cas said, and he sounded so genuinely uncomfortable that Dean had to close his eyes. “I realize you've never liked it when I've done that. But I haven't been able to reach you or your brother on the phone. I think there must be very little reception these days.”  

Dean hadn't even thought of that; neither he nor Sam had had a phone call or text in a long time. The last one he could remember getting was from Cas himself, telling him to come to the abandoned playground.

“That's...that's okay, man. Don't worry about it.” Dean sank heavily onto the nearest bed. He could not tear his eyes away from Cas, who continued to look at him with a kind of stony stoicism that Dean found hard to take.

“I've been tracking you non-stop for days. I went to the bunker first, of course, but you'd already left, and I couldn't reach you to find out where you were going. I followed you as best I could, but you were always just out of my range. Finally I realized that you seemed to be heading east, through  the undarkened states, and so I suspected that you would come through Ohio. You must have gone through an area of Darkness, because I lost you for several hours. It was...unnerving. But I finally caught up to you.”

“You've been tracking me? But I’m warded. How? Some kind of spell?”

“No, not a spell. Um. Were you praying to me, perhaps? Or your brother?”

“I can't speak for Sam, but I haven't prayed to anyone or anything except the water pressure gods in a long time.”

“Oh, I see. Well, it doesn't have to be a formal prayer. Angels can pick up on...certain feelings or emotions that are aimed towards them.”

“What?” Dean asked, suddenly feeling a hot pulse of something rush through his blood. He could feel his face flood with heat, and he hated it.

“Like, longing, for instance. We can pick up on things like that. But it doesn't matter,” he added quickly. “It functions similarly to a formal prayer, it's just less precise. I tracked you by following your, um, informal prayers. And Sam's too, I think. There were a few from him.” He looked slightly confused at that, glancing over to the side as though trying to work out a problem that eluded him. “The quality of his informal prayers is different to yours, though. That's how I can tell them apart.”

Dean felt, suddenly, like he needed to be anywhere but here, with Cas' impossible presence crowding in on him in some dim motel room at the end of the world. He sprang up and walked quickly to the bathroom, where the tub was now threatening to overflow. He turned off the tap with more force than it required, and it squealed in protest.

“Dean, I am sorry, truly, I wouldn't have come to you if it wasn't important. I can see my being here is upsetting you. I promise, I'll leave you in peace when I've talked to you.”

“Leave me in peace?” Dean repeated, disbelieving. “I don't want you to leave at _all_ , you dick.”

“I...” Cas started, panic slowly spreading across his face.

“Forget it, you're going to, what, drive that damned car of yours through miles of end-times bullshit and Darkness just so you can go back home? You can't wait to get away from me, huh. Not that I blame you.”

“Dean...”

“No screw that, you can spend one night recuperating like a normal goddamned person. You're not tearing out of here on one of your Heavenly kamikaze missions without any rest, just because being around me is bad for you. I'll get you a room, you tell me what you have to say, and you can leave in the morning.”

"But..."

He knew this offer made no practical sense.  Cas didn't need to sleep, or even rest, but he found that he didn't care; he was getting a room for Cas even if it used up the last of their cash. If this was the last nice thing he could do for Cas, if it was the only nice thing he could do for him, then damn it, he was going to do it, stupid though it may be.  He was out the door before Cas could say another word, stalking barefoot across the empty parking lot and fumbling for another wad of cash in his wallet as he made his way the front desk.

It was deserted. Dean rang the service bell as though it had offended him, then took a breath and rang it again, more sensibly. No one showed. “Hey, buddy! I need another room. I've got...two hundred in cash and I'll give you ten gallons of gas to make up the difference.” He didn't actually have ten gallons of gasoline, but he figured they could put the car in neutral and sneak out before dawn, before the clerk came to collect.

“You hear me?” Dean stood fidgeting, tapping his fingers against the counter in an impatient tattoo. The flickering lights made his eyes smart.

After a few minutes, with the clock harshly punctuating each second, Dean took matters into his own hands. “Screw it,” he said, hopping across the nicotine-stained wooden desk. The man had taken the keys out from some kind of drawer underneath, and Dean reached down to find it. His hand slid across something tacky, and he quickly withdrew it. It came away red. “Shit.”

In his haste to get away from Cas, and the helpless suffocating sensation that gripped him every time their eyes met, Dean had forgotten to bring a gun. The knife he kept in his boot was...in his boot, back in the room. “Shit,” he said again. He cast around for some kind of weapon, and saw the butt of a rifle—the same rifle that had been aimed at his chest not two hours ago—peeking out from the small corridor behind the counter. He crouched down and dragged it to him as quietly as he could. He checked the chamber. It was still fully loaded. The guy hadn't managed to get off a single shot, whatever had happened to him.

Dean wondered, as he stalked his way silently towards the back, if he should wait for Sam to return, or go and fetch Cas. But that decision was made for him as he reached the dingy little room that served as the hotel's office. The place had been ransacked. It bore all the signs of a brawl or a break-in: the ancient computer lay in pieces on the floor, a chair had splintered against the far wall and the table had been upended. Dean began to think that looters had managed to get the jump on the guy after all, until he noticed the metal filing cabinet with a four-inch-deep indentation that looked exactly like a human fist. Next to it, the clerk was laid out in a crumpled heap.

Dean knelt beside him. Still alive, still breathing, though he'd clearly taken a hard hit, with one eye swollen shut completely and a violent mottling of bruises and blood across his face. (Dean thought of the filing cabinet and hoped that the guy's skull had good structural integrity). “Hey,” Dean said, giving him a hesitant prod, “Can you hear me? You awake?” One arm looked like it might be broken, or at least badly sprained, and Dean patted him down as gently as he could. He didn't stir, though the fingers on his undamaged hand twitched slightly, which Dean took to mean that his spine might not be broken. A small mercy; they were the only kind going these days.

“Damn, okay, don't move. I'll—uh, I'll get someone who can help, okay? Just stay put.” It was a stupid thing to say, Dean realized, because this guy clearly wasn't going anywhere.

Dean sprinted back out of the lobby and across the parking lot, rifle over his shoulder. Cas could heal this guy, easy. Cas had his mojo back. It would only take him a second. Cas was...Cas was still inside the motel room, which was now missing its door. And two windowpanes, which lay in diamond-bright shards on the ground. Shit. He'd only been gone for, what, ten minutes? Twenty at the most? He pulled up short and flattened himself against the wall, gripping the rifle hard.

He peered around the door frame and his blood turned to ice. The hotel room was in much the same state as the office had been, as though two wild animals had been set loose in a death match. The door to the bathroom appeared to have exploded inward, and there, amid the broken tile and shattered sink, leaning over the freshly-filled bathtub, was a figure with its arms plunged in up to the elbows, holding something underwater. Between one skipped heartbeat and the next, Dean realized that the 'something' happened to be wearing a tan coat and a dark suit, and that it wasn't moving.

“Hey!” Dean roared, firing a round at the attacker's back. The figure spun around, revealing itself to be a fair-haired man in a long black coat, soaked to the skin and wild-eyed. The bullet had cut clean through his shoulder, exploding the tile on the other side, but he didn't even seem to notice.

He lurched forward, clearly intending to lunge at Dean, when a hand shot up out of the water and gripped the  man by his throat. Cas sat bolt upright. Water cascaded off of him with a sound like thunder. His face was a picture of cold fury, his eyes were the blue flames that engulfed prophets. He twisted his arm, bringing the man in black's head down against the side of the tub hard enough to crack the porcelain.

“That was a mistake,” Cas growled, and Dean had to close his eyes as a world-ending pulse of light filled the room. “Angels don't need to breathe, you bastard.” There was no sign of charred spectral wings, no sulfurous red flicker that heralded a demon's end, just the tell-tale pool of crimson spreading across the floor from the bullet wound, and the burnt-offering smell of flesh as the man’s eye sockets smoked like empty craters. This was a human, just a man, and at first glance, an ordinary one: clean-shaven, soberly dressed and of average height. The kind of guy you'd overlook in a crowd.

Cas was coughing, bringing up a lungful of water, because apparently he, too had momentarily forgotten the no-breathing trick. Dean dropped the gun and rushed over to him, clutching at his arm and patting him solidly on the back. Cas braced his hand against Dean's shoulder and took a moment to steady himself. “I'm alright, Dean. I'm alright,” he said, once he got his voice back. It was remarkably even, considering. But Dean was shaken, breathing hard, and found himself leaning on Cas as much as Cas was leaning on him.

Several things dawned on them slowly, and then all at once: that Dean had reached out for Cas, and Cas for Dean, instinctively, without a thought; that they were still holding on to each other in a death grip, despite the fact that both were unhurt; that Dean still had his hand splayed across the sodden expanse of Cas' back, and had now switched from giving it reverberating thuds to tracing soothing circles with the flat of his palm; that they were staring at each other. Dean's hand stilled halfway through another circuit, but remained in place.

Time continued to behave irrationally, in stuttering little jump cuts between the waxing and waning of the overhead light. In one, Dean was staring, dumbstruck, at Cas. ( _And what was that look, what **was** it? Was it hope or was it regret_?) In the next, he had pulled Cas to him with a shaky exhale that verged on a sob. In the next, he could feel Cas bring his other arm up and around, tentatively, as though he was unsure he should be doing it at all. Then suddenly his arm tightened around Dean with certainty, and time seemed to stop entirely.  Dean wondered, briefly, if it was odd that they were embracing beside the rapidly-cooling body of an enemy they had just slain. Not really, no, he decided, pulling Cas closer to him. Everything flickered and then, suddenly Sam's voice was saying, from somewhere very far away: “ _Dean_? What the _hell_?”

Time reasserted itself in Cas' rapid step backwards. Whatever glimmer Dean had seen in his face was extinguished, his expression carefully schooled as he looked away from Dean and towards the ruined door frame, where Sam was in the process of lowering his gun and trying to take in the scene.

“ _Cas_?” Sam asked. His confusion was almost comical in contrast to the scene of bloody devastation that surrounded them.

“Hello.”

“What—what's going on? What the hell happened here? Who is this guy?”

“This guy is the son of a bitch that tried to kill Cas,” Dean said picking up the rifle where he had dropped it. He found that he suddenly needed to do something with his hands. He looked at the gun blankly for a second, then something clicked. “Damn it! Cas, come with me. The hotel clerk tried to go mano-a-mano with this bastard and he's in pretty bad shape. Will you help?”

“Of course,” Cas said.

“Sam, we'll be right back. Let me just see to the guy at the check in. See if you can find any identifiers on the body. Cas, come on.”

They made their way quickly back to the hotel office. The clerk had not moved at all, and Dean felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Were they too late? He sunk down to his knees and felt frantically for a pulse. Still there, but very thready; another minute or two, and he'd be dead.

“Dean, let me.” Cas laid his hand, very gently, against the fallen man's forehead. He sent a small tendril of healing grace into his body, knitting together broken bone, realigning teeth, drawing blood out of damaged muscle and easing the pressure where the brain had started to press against the skull. But it wasn't as clean a job as Dean was used to seeing. Though he was clearly now out of danger, signs of injury still lingered, and Dean could tell he would be feeling a bit hard done by in the morning. He looked at Cas uncertainly.

“I know, “Cas said, as though he'd heard the unspoken question. “I—even with my own grace back, without full access to Heaven's power, it takes more energy for me to heal than it normally would. If Hannah were here, she'd do a better job. Healing others has always been one of her primary functions.” He didn't meet Dean's eyes as he said this, and it dawned on Dean that he was embarrassed, as though he was admitting some great failing.  
“Hell, Cas, this guy was about two seconds away from biting it. Now he's just going to have a headache and a few bruises when he wakes up. You did great.” Cas gave him a narrow look from the corner of his eye, but said nothing, and Dean cleared his throat awkwardly. “So, uh, about that. When is he going to wake up, do you think?”

“I put him into a fairly deep sleep in the hope of giving his body a chance to recover on its own. He shouldn't wake up until late tomorrow, I imagine.”

“Ah, that's good. In that case, let's make him more comfortable so he doesn't wake up with a crick in his neck. That'd just be adding insult to injury.”

That done, they made their way back to the motel room. Dean snagged two more keys on his way out. “What? It's not like we can stay in that one. And you saved his life, so I figure that covers the damage and the extra room.” Belatedly, Dean realized that his feet were filthy and bleeding from the shards of porcelain and glass he had stepped in during the chaos of the fight. He hissed as he extracted a small but breathtakingly sharp sliver that had insinuated itself into the heel of his right foot. Without warning he felt the subtle press of fingertips against his face, then a short, sharp jolt of grace. His feet were clean and unblemished.

“Dude, what did you do that for?”

“You were injured.”

“Cas, you just said you're not at full healing power or whatever, and here you are wasting it on me just for some cuts.”

“I wasn't _wasting_ it, Dean. The threat of infection is incredibly high, and you don't have reliable access to antibiotics. Sepsis is a very real concern right now. Forgive me, but I'd rather you kept all of your limbs.”

Dean drew in a breath to argue. _Just say 'thank you', you dick. The guy healed you because he was worried about you._

“Thank you.”

Cas blinked. “You're welcome.” The pause between the two words was barely perceptible, but it was there, and Dean felt even worse. “Just trying to make myself useful.”

Dean's jaw tensed at the phrase.

They had reached the room at last. Sam had already begun clean-up. Dean supposed there wasn't much chance of being collared, since cops seemed to be otherwise occupied in the city centers, and any law enforcement databases would probably be down. Still, they were professionals, and Dean understood the bone-deep habit that drove Sam to move the body into the bathtub and begin scrubbing prints. Dean saw a smaller figure, shorter than Sam, sporting a shapely neck and a head of closely-cropped dark hair. He furrowed his brow in confusion for a moment, until he remembered the third (or fourth, he supposed) member of their party.

As if on cue, Elle's head whipped round. She clearly had excellent reflexes, and, Dean was relieved to note, was extremely quick on the uptake. Otherwise, he suspected that the sawed-off shotgun in her hands would have been aimed squarely at his head a millisecond later. He saw the cold, hard look melt from her face from one instant to the next, then change again to something like astonishment when her eyes slid to Cas, who was standing slightly behind him. She tilted her head, in a way that reminded Dean vaguely of Cas when he was trying to untangle some particularly impenetrable nuance of human interaction.

“We're back,” Dean said, stepping through the door and cringing as his newly-healed feet touched the damp carpet. He quickly jumped onto the bed and wrestled his socks and shoes back on, then his outer shirt and jacket. There, now he no longer felt naked. “The clerk should be okay. Cas healed him up pretty good, and zapped him to sleep for the rest of the night.”

“Cas? This is... _.Castiel_?” Elle's look of wide-eyed astonishment was back, paired with a deep and incisive interest even more intense than the one she'd shown for either Sam or Dean. She had a stare like a laser, and Dean was reminded once again of Cas in the space of two minutes.

Cas, for his part, only looked confused. “Yes,” he said. “Uh. It's nice to meet you, though I'm afraid you have the advantage of me.”

“Oh! My name's Elle. Wow, it's so nice to meet you, too.” She had crossed the space between the bed and the door and was shaking Cas' hand enthusiastically before Dean even had time to comment. “I've read all of Carver Edulnd's books.” She beamed at him, but Cas just stared, with his own wide-eyed look, though Dean suspected it was not astonishment that caused it.

Unbidden, Dean was remembered another meeting, not so long ago, between Cas and Charlie. The way Charlie had looked at Cas was not dissimilar to the way Elle was looking at him now, and suddenly Dean felt a wave of nauseous rage and sadness so strong that he had to sit back down.

“Can we just....skip the fangirling, please, Elle?” Dean asked, more roughly than he intended to. He saw her drop Cas' hand slowly and turn towards him with an unreadable look. “Sorry, it's just that, uh, you know, some guy just tried to murder Cas here, and nearly did murder another guy in this motel. So, you know...” He trailed off, trying to seem less hostile. But Charlie's ghost still pressed at him, and so he looked down at the floor, unable to finish his sentence.

“Yeah, of course. You're right. Sorry,” Elle said, sounding unruffled.

“He wasn't trying to murder me, Dean.” Cas cut in, unexpectedly.

“What? He was holding your head underwater Cas. How is that not attempted murder?”

“He was doing what?” Sam asked, wringing another sodden towel into the sink. The water  that leached out of it had changed from bright red to pale pink.

“He forgot that angels don't need to breathe,” Dean said. He remembered the look on Cas' face as he had risen from the water, and thought of the of the vengeful desert god that had fashioned him. He shivered.

“No, you're not listening. He wasn't trying to murder _me._ He was trying to murder _you,_ Dean.”

Everyone stopped.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked slowly.

“I mean, he thought I was Dean. When he—got the jump on me, he said 'I've come for your soul, Dean Winchester.' Then he bit me, for some reason.” Cas frowned in evident bewilderment, then continued. “He was incredibly strong, as you can see by the state of the room. But as far as I can tell from the body, he's just a man.”

“What do think, attack dog spell?” Sam asked, peeling back the plastic shower curtain liner that served as a makeshift shroud. “I mean, there's a lot of blood on this guy's face; I can't tell if some of it came from his eyes or not.”

Cas shook his head. “No, I think it was more than that. An attack dog spell alone wouldn't make a normal human being strong enough to get the better of me, even in my diminished state.”

Dean tried to ignore the comment about ‘diminished state’ and asked: “So, what? An attack dog spell with a hit of demon blood for extra juice?”

Cas looked thoughtful. “No, I didn't sense anything demonic. But, actually, you may not be far wrong. Excuse me.” He stepped around Sam, who was still holding the plastic sheet up, revealing the expanse of the dead man's body. Unperturbed, Cas opened up the coat, with its butchered buttons. He then lifted up the white shirt, which had become darkened with drying blood.

“Cas, what the hell? Have a little respect for the dead,” Dean said, uneasily.

“Let the man work,” Elle chided. “Angel. Whatever.”

“Sorry.”

Finally, Cas found what he was searching for. “Look,” he said, pointing to a faint sigil, positioned on the man's left flank. “This is an Enochian battle sigil. I've got many like it on my true form. Or, well, not like this exactly, but similar. This is...some kind of variation. It's been weakened and modified to be suitable for a human body. Temporarily, anyway.”

“Wait,” Elle said, squinting down at the small, pale lines that formed the sigil, “What does all that mean? Someone whammied this guy to make him attack Dean and then added this...sigil to make the spell stronger?”

“No, I suspect the sigil is meant to make the wearer stronger and able to withstand the fatal effects of the spell. Perhaps it also leaves him more in control of his own thoughts, while still maintaining the single-mindedness of the original spell. Not that it matters. I'm fairly certain this man would have died in a week or two as the sigil burned away.'” He stepped away, and Sam returned the covering to its place. “Relentless drive to complete their mission, and imbued with superhuman strength. This combination of spells was meant to make angels of men.”

“We found these on the body,” Elle said, holding out two small crystal vials that were banded with silver. They were inscribed with an intricate series of lines, which Dean realized after a moment were Enochian. “Sam says he’s seen something similar, but man, I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

Cas took them and examined them closely, turning them in his hand as he read. “These are...they’re for separating a human soul from its body at the moment of death. They are very similar to the phial used to hold an angel’s grace separate from its vessel.” He looked at Sam. “This one is yours,” Cas said, holding one up by its thin chain. “It’s got your name on it. This one is Dean’s. He wasn’t lying. He literally had come for your souls.”

“So, let me get this straight,” said Dean. “Some good old-fashioned Rowena witchcraft with some angel-magic douchebaggery on top. What does that mean?”

“Rowena and Metatron have started working together,” Cas said, solemnly, washing his hands. “Metatron is the reason I returned in the first place, Dean.”

“What do you mean?” Dean asked, his mouth dry.

“When I told you how I got my grace back, I lied,” Cas said, crushing the crystal vials under the heel of his shoe until they were ground to a fine powder. They sent up a tiny shower of sparks as they broke. “And for that I am truly sorry, but Sam thought it best that we focused on...other things. And I agreed. We were unsure of what your reaction might be, given...the condition you were in at the time.  I see now that I was being cowardly.”

Dean looked between Cas and Sam, worrying his bottom lip and trying to reign in his temper.

“Yeah, that would have been good to know.” He could control himself. Barely.

“I kept trying to bring it up, Dean, but you kept shutting down the conversation before I could even start!” Sam protested. “I wanted to tell you. I did. I’m so damn sick of secrets, especially now that we’re a team again. So listen. Metatron escaped with the Demon Tablet, yes, but he’s mortal now.”

“Wait, what?”

“I removed his grace several months ago,” Cas said, with some satisfaction. “And Sam shot him in the leg. It was extremely--well, I hesitate to use the word fun, but… anyway. I still have it. An angel's grace will always betray the way an angel's will is turned, even if the grace is no longer inside the angel. In the last week, I began to hear—or sense, I suppose is a better word—that his will had turned back towards you two, and that he was intent on doing you harm. What kind of harm, I could not say, but I could tell that he was wholly focused on it and it felt...bad. I came down here to warn you to look out for him. I now understand that I was only half right in my warning.”

“Fuck,” Sam said.

“Awesome. That's just awesome,” Dean said.

“Who are Rowena and Metatron and what the hell is going on?” Elle cut in, clearly exasperated.

“It's...” Dean began.

“Yeah, it's a long story, I get the picture. But until you get your car working again, we're stuck here, so I've got plenty of time to listen.”

“Sam, you explain. I'm going to move our stuff into another room and get Cas set up in his own.”

Sam gave him an odd look at that, but nodded, turning back to the clean up he had abandoned. “Right, let me see if I can explain this in a way that doesn't make us look like colossal fuck-ups...” Sam began, but Dean was already out the door, laden with bags, and did not hear the rest of it.

As he stepped into a different, corpse-free but equally offensively-wallpapered room, Dean felt Cas hovering uncertainly by the door. “Cas, man, I'm glad you're okay, really, but I've got to ask you something. I mean, I know your grace isn't at one hundred per cent, but how'd that jackass get the jump on you, anyway?” He turned to look at Cas, who was watching him unpack with the same level of interest he granted the slow unfurling of flowers or old episodes of _Columbo_ —which is to say, as though it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen.

“I thought he was you.” Cas said. He shrugged, like Dean had not just had a blunt knife lodged between his ribs at the words. “I realized he wasn't in a matter of seconds, of course, and I fought back. But by then he'd already landed a few blows, so I was unsteady. Then he mentioned your name, and I realized he thought I was you, and therefore human. He got me in the water, and then I realized I could just wait him out by playing dead. Fortunately your shot meant I didn't have to wait as long as I might have done.”

“You...thought he was me.”

 _We were unsure of what your reaction might be_ resounded in his head again. No, actually, he realized, they had been pretty damn sure.

“Well, yes. I had my back to the door, so I couldn't tell immediately.” Cas leaned against the doorway, another of his strangely human postures that Dean found slightly surreal. “I didn't want to hurt you.”

“Cas,” Dean began, completely unsure of how to finish the sentence but determined to try.

“Dean, I'm sorry, but I'm getting something through on angel radio. I think Hannah's trying to reach me. Let me just tell her I will not be heading back until morning.” He walked a few paces away out into the parking lot, and Dean, not for the first time, kind of wanted to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I meant to keep Team Free Will apart longer than this, because, hey, that's what they do on the show, right? But in the end I couldn't. They just kept finding their way back to each other. I wonder what that means?_   
>  _And yeah, there's a reason I used a bathtub in this chapter._
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> _This is the first action-focused thing I've written, so I hope the BAMF-ness of all involved was satisfactory._


	8. Temperance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas and Dean finally make up. We learn a few things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Um. Just as the last chapter was my first action-focused piece of writing, so is this chapter my first smut-focused piece of writing. It's probably not even all that smutty, really, it just feels that way to me, since it's a first attempt. Still and all, I hope you enjoy._   
>  _**Edited to add:** I listened to Songs: Ohia's "Coxcomb Red" and Over the Rhine's "Long Lost Brother" on repeat for this. You would not go far wrong by doing the same._

At two o'clock in the morning, on the thirty-sixth day since the rising of the Darkness, in a run-down motel in Ohio, Dean came to him.

Castiel had burned the unnamed attacker's body to cinder, and from cinder to nothing. To destroy was less demanding than to heal, to unmake easier than to make, as it always had been. Castiel was reminded once again that destruction lay at the very heart of him, that he was a creature of violence by design. God had forged him with the brutal purity of intention that defined a blade, or, perhaps, indeed, a hammer—a marvelous weapon of holy will. He thought it cruel, though, that his Father would let His instruments feel the blood that stained them.

They had traded awkward good-nights. Elle was more forthcoming, smiling warmly at him with her straight white teeth, and telling him to sleep well. Something about her tugged at him oddly, and he felt simultaneously drawn to her and suspicious of her. Here soul was _there_ , as far as he could tell, but it was also--it was almost shrouded, it slipped away when he tried to look at it, as though it was covered by some strange version of angel warding. He wondered if it had to do with the years-long coma she had been in. Had she been warded and simply not remembered?

He wondered if he should talk to Dean more about her in the morning. But that would mean...talking to Dean in the morning. After the panic and adrenaline had bled out of him, Dean had become strange and withdrawn. It was to be expected, he supposed. Castiel had opted to fight the war against the Darkness from Heaven rather than at Dean's side. He was a gun that had refused to fire. A gun had no purpose beyond its bullets, and Dean had no use for something that served no purpose. Dean was practical that way.

Castiel tried to feel bad about his choice, but found that he could not. Everything he had said to Dean was true. He had been fashioned as an instrument in a crucible of obedience and control. But he had _chosen_ not to be one, and in so doing, had he not proven that there was mercy, too, at the heart of him? He had failed, again and again he had failed, but in defying his nature, was he not also _defining_ it? He hoped so. And that hope was all he had, the one small thing that belonged to him and no one else. It was the kernel of his—well, not _soul_ , he supposed—but of his being, and the only thing that could not be taken from him, either by hatred...or by love.

Ah yes, and there was that, too. Castiel remembered his declaration, couched in the language of defiance, but still inescapable. Dean's discomfort made a little more sense.

Well. Soon it wouldn't matter.

He had slipped quietly into the room that Dean had secured for him, four doors away from the Winchesters and three away from Elle. He wondered if the distance was intentional. There was no one else in the motel as far as he could sense. Castiel toed his shoes off and removed his coat. There was no need for this, as he had long stopped needing sleep, but he felt compelled to observe some kind of ritual to separate the night from the day. He sat, cross-legged and still, against the headboard. He breathed slowly, in and out, because he found it pleasant, and enjoyed the cool pull of the inhale in his throat and the damp warmth of the exhale in his mouth. This was one thing he could not experience in Heaven, another way of being alive—or almost alive—that only existed within the sharp delineations of a human body.

An hour passed this way. Then, without warning, there came a soft knock at his door. He frowned, slipping quietly from the bed and walking on silent feet to the front of the room. He hesitated; the events of this evening made him cautious. There was a gap in the dingy curtains, which poured pale stripes of light onto the carpet through the open blinds. He leaned forward slowly and looked through it. The night was cloudy and the dark near-perfect, but his eyesight allowed him to see Dean's familiar figure as though in full daylight. The human heart in his chest and the inhuman one elsewhere within him lurched. He opened the door.

“Dean,” Cas said, then furrowed his brow in confusion at the frightened look Dean gave him at the sound of his own name. “What's the matter?”

Dean swallowed and shook his head. “Nothing, I...” He looked back towards the room he shared with Sam, rubbing the back of his neck. “Look, never mind. I'm sorry, I told you I'd leave you be. You, uh, just get some rest, okay? I'll see you in the morning.” The last phrase ended with an uncertain lilt, almost a question. He turned to go.

“Dean, wait, where are you going? Come in, at least.” He stepped halfway out of the door and reached out for Dean. Cas' fingertips barely brushed his arm, but Dean stopped instantly, like a dog at the end of a chain. He did not turn around, however, but kept his head tilted down and towards his shoulder, not quite looking at Cas. “Dean, please.” A muscle twitched in Dean's jaw at that.

“Is that a good idea?”

 _Probably not, no._ “Yeah. Why wouldn't it be?” _Many reasons, but..._ “Just come in.”

“Yeah, okay. Just for a minute, then I'll leave you alone.” Dean gave one short nod and stepped into the room, brushing past Cas, who did not seem to be able to get out of the way in time. Cas flipped the light switch, and the lamp pulsed to life with thin whine. “Ugh, these damn lights are killing my eyes,” Dean said, scrubbing his hand over his face.

“The lamps are going out all over the world,” Cas said, solemnly. At Dean's puzzled look, he added: “It's a, um, quote by a British politician from World War One. I heard it on a documentary.”

“Ah. Okay.” Dean stood by the yellowed wooden table  with an awkwardness that didn't suit him, making him seem much younger than his actual age. They stood silently for several long minutes.

“Do you want me to turn the light off?” Cas finally asked.

“No, it's okay, how else are we going to see?”

“Well, technically, I can perceive all spectra of light, so I don't actually need the lamp.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright, Superman,” Dean said, with the first hints of a genuine smile that Cas had seen in a long time.

“It's true. The aurora borealis is particularly beautiful when you can see beyond what's visible to the human eye.” Cas found himself smiling, as well, and was startled at what an unfamiliar sensation it had become.

"Yeah, I'll bet,” Dean said, then turned serious again, the smile vanishing from his face as though it had never been there.

Cas found he did not like this. He sat down on the edge of one of the twin beds, hoping the less-formal posture would put Dean at his ease. ( _If he had an ease?_ Cas wasn't sure any more.) “Dean,” he began again, “Something's bothering you. I can tell. Talk to me.”

“Um, well...” Dean began, then stalled, wrapping one arm around himself in a vaguely defensive posture. Cas felt himself crack in the same place he always did, the same pattern over and over and over, seeing Dean's distress and feeling it break him open, spilling light.

“What is it? Let me help you.”

“God damn it, stop it, Cas. Stop. This isn't about me at all.”

Cas frowned. “It isn't? What's—is something the matter with Sam?”

Dean buried his face in his hands at that, and now Cas was truly alarmed.

“No, it's not about me or Sam, it's about you.”

 _Oh._ Cas felt his heart drop. He had known that Dean would be angry about his departure, but he had hoped to be spared having to defend his decision again. He steeled himself and took a breath, but Dean got there first.

“It's just...I'm worried about you, man.”

“You,” Cas began, but could not progress further. Dean took his ineloquence for a challenge.

“Yes, _me._ I'm worried about this whole Darkness bullshit, and you having to be out in it...”

“If this is about me leaving in the morning, don't worry, I'm able to pass through the darkened states without much problem. If it touches me, I'm able to burn it off with my grace. It usually retreats after that. It's deeply unpleasant, but not insurmountable.” He did not mention the things that the Darkness whispered to him through his skin, or how it reached out to him with slow, strange undulations that he found fascinating in spite of himself.

“Really? You can just burn it away?” Dean dropped his arm and stood straighter, his hunter's instinct piqued at this new bit of information. He narrowed the distance between them.

“Of course,” Cas said. “I'm a seraph, Dean. I'm literally made of Heavenly fire. That's what fire does.”

“Oh, right, yeah. Of course.” Dean sighed, shaking his head. “Okay.” Silence again.

“I...appreciate your concern, though.” Cas offered, uncertainly.

Dean let out a laugh at that. It was a short, almost hysterical sob of sound that drove Castiel to his feet. “Dean.”

“You appreciate my concern.”

“Was that not the correct thing to say?”

“What? No, it was, that was fine. It's just...you're killing me here, you know that?”

“I don't understand.”

“Cas.”

“Yes?” There was something he was missing here, some unspoken cue or gesture he had failed to parse, and he felt something akin to panic bubble under his skin.

_You always like to think you could pass, but you will never be from here. You will never be one of them._

“Christ!”

“No, you were right the first time.”

“No, I mean, Christ, this is so hard, I want to rip my own tongue out to avoid doing it.”

“What? If it's that bad, then don't do it.” Cas tilted his head, still trying to figure out if he'd blacked out somewhere in the middle of this conversation. “Whatever it is.”

“I am _trying_ to apologize to you,” Dean said at last, the words bursting from his mouth as though a dam had been breached.

Cas took an involuntary half-step backwards. Somehow Dean drifted a half-step closer, and the distance between them did not change. Cas replayed the last twenty minutes in the space of a breath, searching for a clue and not finding one.

“Apologize to me for what?”

“For _what_? Oh, fuck me, are you SERIOUS?” Dean's voice was overly-loud in the humid closeness of the room, and Cas could feel the anger vibrating off of him suddenly, a living thing that loomed up between them and bared its fangs at his throat. He swallowed audibly. He had definitely missed something. Silence, he decided, was the safest course of action until he could figure out what that was. Dean no longer bore the Mark, so any blow he landed would not now have the power to break Cas' flesh—he would barely even feel it, if he let his grace take the brunt of it, but he was so tired of violence. He craved gentleness, and softness, and all the things that a gun wasn't, could never be.

Dean must have read something in his expression, in the quick downward cast of his eyes, because he lowered his voice and moved away slightly. “I'm sorry. Jesus, I'm trying to apologize to you and instead I'm acting like a dick.”

Cas said nothing, but slowly sat back down on the bed, watching Dean the entire time.

“Okay, look. Look. I've been thinking about what you said to me before you went back up to Heaven.”

 _Right. That_. Dean was apologizing for...for what? For misleading him? For allowing him to believe that he held some significance beyond his utility? He'd already learned that lesson; he didn't need it reiterated. It wasn't an apology he wanted to hear, but he didn't know if he had it in him to interrupt. He still could not read the situation, so he looked away and waited for a different kind of blow to land.

“You were right, you know, you're not a hammer, and I wish to hell I'd never called you that.”

_What?_

“What?”

“I said: You. Are. Not. A. Hammer.”

“I don't understand,” Cas said, for the second time, and thought ruefully that this could be the motto that defined his long and fractured life. He knew so much and understood so little.

Dean looked at him, despairing. “What do you mean, you don't understand? You're not just some blunt instrument, Cas. Not in general, and definitely not to me. Calling you that was a shitty thing for me to do, but treating you like that was even worse. But I mean, I also once told you that you were like a brother to me. Don't you remember that, too?”

Cas did. He'd often repeated those few seconds of conversation to himself again and again as he performed acts of questionable moral worth in Dean's name (that is what brothers did for each other, after all, wasn’t it? His only context for this was from watching the Winchesters.); he had repeated it as he felt Dean's indifference seep into what passed for his heart (what he'd felt then had not been brotherly, but he did not realize it until later.). He had repeated it to himself as he'd lain bleeding on the floor among a pile of books—a pyre of the things Dean Winchester no longer needed. Though it had never been lit, Cas could feel himself burning away on it. It was then, around the salt-copper that filled his mouth and the jagged burn of a rib that pierced his lung, that he finally asked himself: _But which brother does he mean_?

Cas nearly asked him this now, but decided against the direct cruelty. Instead he said, as calmly as he could: “I think we've firmly established where your priorities are in terms of familial bonds. For both you and for Sam,” he added, unable to keep a note of hurt from creeping into his voice. Dean flinched at his words, but Castiel did not care.

“Yeah, alright, I deserve that, and maybe Sam does, too. And, maybe...maybe 'brother' was the wrong word. I know you probably won't believe me when I tell you this—because why should you, my familial priorities broke the world, right?—but listen to me: I get it. I do. You think you're some kind of tool because that's how we've, I've, been treating you. But you’re not. It's just...you were always leaving, you know? So I thought it was because you didn't want to be around. So I only called you when I needed something.”

“How can you possibly think that?” Cas asked, and he had to slow his heart rate. “Dean, I kept leaving because the very first time I was prepared to stay, I had to go—and yes, Dean, I understand that you did it out of concern for Sam's safety; I have always understood that—but don't think it escaped my notice that as soon as I lost my powers, you asked me to leave and made no effort to ease the transition. Not that you were under any obligation to do so, but I....”

He stopped, consumed by a breathless feeling that he had not felt when his head was held under water. He made himself continue. “And Kevin remained in the bunker with you, translating the Tablet, working. So I came to understand that ours was a contingent relationship—having grace made me useful, and when I was useful I was...” Cas stumbled here, the word “loved” jumping immediately to his tongue before being swallowed. It burned like a hot coal on the way down. “I was needed. Then I started to sicken, and what use is a dying angel to anyone? So I made no overture to stay because I understood my place, and the practical limitations of your friendship. And your brother's.”

“Cas, no, that's not...”

“Dean, I rebelled against Heaven, I fell, and cut down my own kin, because yours was the hill I chose to die on. And die on it I did, several times.” _And one time I didn't_ , Cas thought, _and I died all the same_. “I have made...decisions against my own best interest, in your name. I don't regret any of that, even now, even with all my awful mistakes. But the situation now requires me to be my own—my conscience, such as it, demands it—no matter what else I might like to be.” He could not stop the last part of that sentence, and watched, horrified, as it hung, heavy as a thunder cloud in the air between them. He closed his eyes.

“And I want you to be your own, too,” Dean said, with a note of desperation. He had sat forward and grabbed Cas' hand with both of his own, as though he had not heard the fatal words. It was an astonishingly gentle touch. “I don't want you to be a weapon, not mine or anyone else's. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm trying to say I'm sorry for ever giving you the impression that that's what you were to us. To me. I'm sorry I ever asked you to leave. I'm sorry that what I did to you in the bunker made you feel that way. Actually, I'm sorry about that whole thing in ways I can't even describe to you, and I will be until the day I die. After. It's just, you...” He made an angry noise in the back of his throat, as though his words were brawling with each other there.

“You said that no one loves a hammer,” Dean said after a long time, and something in his voice was different than it had been for the whole conversation, different than it had been for years. He still held Cas’ hand; he wondered if Dean even realized he was holding it. “And I am trying to tell you that...you aren't a hammer. Do you understand?”

“I think we've also firmly established that I understand nothing.”

Dean had still not let go of his hand, and Cas found himself looking down at where they met, memorizing every contact point, every callus and faint ridge of scar tissue. He instinctively wanted to heal these things, to make Dean's hands whole and perfect again, but stopped himself. He would rather remember them as they actually were, imperfect and warm and bearing witness to Dean's humanity—all of it, even the bad parts—so like and so different to all others. Absently, he rubbed the pad of his thumb over the knuckles of one of them. He heard Dean breathe in, almost a gasp, and realized what he was doing. He stopped.

Dean tried again, speaking slowly, as though to a child. “Cas, you said no one loves a hammer, and you know what, you were right about that. But I am telling you that you were wrong about _you_. You are not a hammer, not to me. Never to _me_. Do you understand?” Dean was staring at Cas with a look that was unsettling on a human face, ardent and almost angelic in its all-consuming focus, and _where_ had Dean learned to do that? _Why_ was he doing it? What was he not understanding, what....Oh. _Oh._

“Oh.” Cas felt frozen in place, unable to come up with an adequate description for his thoughts in any language he knew, alive or dead. Sanskrit, Elomite, and Provençal swarmed in his head, but all he ended up saying was: “I understand. I think.”

“Do you?” Dean's voice was very quiet, so quiet that it barely stirred the overly-warm air of the room, but Cas heard it as clearly as though the words were dropped straight into his ear, like a poison, like a cure. “Okay, then.”

Cas felt Dean's hands tighten around his own, then move slightly so that their fingers interlaced. They fit together neatly, as though they belonged that way.

And then, Dean was guiding Cas towards him, and they were leaning towards each other, in a kind of slow underwater movement that made Cas think that perhaps they had momentarily slipped towards a black hole. Dean was closing his eyes, and the sweep of his eyelashes brushed against Cas’ skin. Cas belatedly realized that he should probably close his, too, but he couldn't make himself do it, not yet. Their lips met, softly, almost tentative, not at all what Cas might have expected, had he ever allowed himself to expect this.

Cas felt his heart illuminate like an arc lamp of aluminum white, hotter than all the grace that moved within him, and he thought that perhaps he would die, and that he didn't care.

The overhead light exploded. The room went dark.

Dean jumped at the shower of sparks, breaking the contact and closing the circuit.

“Sorry,” Cas said, and his voice sounded strange to him, as though it belonged to someone else. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean for that to happen.”

“What, the...what we just did?” Dean asked, and in the dark, Castiel could see his wide-eyed look, his partly open mouth, to which he pressed his fingers.

“No, the...the lamp. I'm sorry about the lamp. I didn't mean to do that. I'm sorry it startled you.” The air smelled faintly of ozone, as though from a lightning strike, and Cas wished dearly that he could still fly at that moment, so he could hide his face in another state, another country. Perhaps the rings of Saturn.

But Dean just laughed, a bright, delighted noise that glinted in the summer dark. “You did that?”

“No,” Cas said, smiling in relief, “You did that.”

And he was grateful for all of the light spectra that existed, because the blush that crept over Dean's face (and down his neck, to where it disappeared into the shadow of his faded old t-shirt) was beautiful to see in all of them.

“So, do you understand now?” Dean's voice was just as quiet as before, and he avoided looking towards Cas. Even though he could not see in the dark, he had to know he was being watched.

“Explain it to me again,” Cas said, catching Dean's hand and pulling him forward very slightly, gingerly, as though at any moment Dean would suddenly change his mind about the whole thing. Mercifully, Dean followed, sliding down to narrow expanse of floor between the two beds and genuflecting like an altar boy, directly between Cas' knees. Which, oh. That hadn't been what he was aiming for. They'd been off-script for a few minutes, to use Dean's parlance, but Cas began to wonder if they'd suddenly switched to another show entirely. But then Dean was looking up at him, with an expression he had never seen before, and the old fault lines that ran through Cas split open further.

“Alright,” Dean said, and pulled him downwards by the lapels of his suit jacket, and kissed him again, and again. “How about now?”

Cas was having trouble thinking clearly. He had once, during the first Apocalypse, drank the contents of a liquor store. He had once or twice, after he had failed to find his Father and the homesickness became unbearable, consumed enough MDMA to intoxicate an entire nightclub, trying to recreate the euphoria that accompanied singing the triple invocation of holiness at the foot of the Heavenly Throne. (He had found these experiences enjoyable to a startling degree—but when he told Dean about them, Dean had gotten so inexplicably angry that Cas had never mentioned it again). But this was different; this was better and yet, somehow more disorienting. He found that he wanted to be everywhere at once, feel everything at once, do everything at once, but at the same time did not even know where to begin. He had barely moved. He kept his hands to himself, flat against the scratchy bedspread.

“Not...not quite. Explain it again.”

So Dean did, smiling a little, placing a series of extremely soft kisses across Cas' face, from the corner of his jaw, to his forehead, the bridge of his nose, the apex of each cheekbone, both eyelids. Cas realized, with a jolt, that Dean was kissing every place that he had inflicted damage. He was revisiting the whole sorry story, apologizing to the flesh he had brutalized with something approaching reverence. Cas remembered exactly where every blow had landed, of course he did, his memory made it impossible to forget; but it seemed that Dean had remembered, too, and Cas felt a rush of heat in his face, rather unexpectedly.

“Hey,” Dean said, pulling away, squinting at him through the dark. “Hey, you okay?” He released his grip on the jacket and brought a hand up towards Cas' cheek, but then checked himself before he made contact. His hand hovered uncertainly a centimeter away, and so Cas turned his face toward the marbled flesh of Dean's palm and pressed into the touch.

“Yes.”

“Are you crying?”

“I don't cry.”

Dean's thumb moved carefully under the orbit of Castiel's eye. It came away wet. “Seems to me like you do.” Cas could see him watching his face very closely, though he was hindered by the lack of light. “What's wrong?”

“For possibly the first time in my life, nothing.” Probably the only time, too, the practical part of him  chimed in, knowing full well what was coming. He shut the practical part of him down with extreme prejudice. Cas pressed one of his own hands to Dean's, where it still cradled his face, and used the other one to pull him up from the floor. “That can't be good for your knees,” Cas said, with a hint of reproach.

“You're right,” Dean replied, and his knees popped as he stood. “They're always the first thing to go.” He looked down at Cas, clearly unsure of what to do next.

“Come here.” He pulled Dean down beside him and brought their foreheads together, breathing in and out with his eyes closed, listening to the high, wild sound of Dean's heartbeat.

“Well?” Dean asked.

“Well what?”

“What...what should I do?”

Cas opened his eyes. “You're asking _me_? My knowledge of human intimacy is almost entirely theoretical. Granted, I have watched it evolve since the dawn of your race, so I do have quite a lot of knowledge on which to draw—but observation is a poor substitute for practical experience. And I’ve never been particularly interested in practical experience before, anyway. You're the veteran here.”

“Jeez. No pressure,” Dean said, sounding nervous, but not moving away. Then he raised his head. “And your knowledge isn't completely theoretical.”

“No, of course not. I didn't say that,” Cas replied, fighting the urge to roll his eyes, “I said _almost_. My time with April was...useful, in some ways, I suppose. It was her kindness that made me want to try, rather than her appearance. Unfortunately, I was deceived by both things.”

“Man, I'm sorry.”

“We all lose battles sometimes. I lost that one.”

“This isn't a battle.” Dean's hand had drifted under the fabric of Cas' jacket and began absently tracing the line of his spine through the thin weave of his shirt. Cas finally understood what it meant when people said they melted at a touch.

“No, it isn't. It's...it's nice. And you have the advantage of genuinely kind intentions.” Dean gave him a sudden, surprisingly intense look at that. Cas didn't have time to interpret it, for an instant later he was being held close, being pulled fast against Dean's chest, being kissed again, more deeply this time, being pressed back onto the bed. Dean moved carefully, and slowly, pushing them both down and guiding Cas with a hand on his hip, until they were stretched out full length. Then Dean moved to his neck, kissing where the angle of his jaw met the column of his throat. This was an unexpectedly sensitive area, and Cas inhaled sharply.

“Too much?” Dean asked, pulling back when he heard the sound. His eyes were hazy, like a patient coming round from anesthesia but unwilling to wake up fully yet; but he also seemed concerned, and began to move his leg from between Cas'.

Cas held him in place. “What? No, that's not what that meant.” He tilted his chin heavenward, and his Adam's apple jumped a little where the skin pulled taut. “Do it again.”

“Okay.” The kisses he laid there were harder now, hard enough to bruise, almost, and Dean stopped himself again. “Sorry, I...I don't want to leave a mark.”

“It doesn't hurt. It's fine, it's fine.” Truthfully, he didn't care what Dean did at this point, only that he continued doing it with that look in his eyes.

“No bruises,” Dean said, pulling back, suddenly serious.

“Alright.” Cas tried to guide him back down to him, but was hindered by his suit jacket, which had become twisted, and made it difficult to move his arms. “A little help here?”

Dean laughed once again, low and right in Cas' ear, and worked the jacket off of him, dropping it to the floor.

“Better?”

“Yes.”

“Um.” An uncertain look crossed Dean's face.

“What?” Cas asked, suddenly terrified that Dean was going to climb off of the bed, tell him it was all a mistake, and never look back.

“Can I....” Here Dean reached out and hooked his fingers under the knot of the tie Cas wore, which was now completely askew.

Cas had no idea what he was asking to do, but could only say: “Yes, of course. Anything.” And he meant it.

Dean nodded, and kissed Cas again, pulling him up by the tie. Cas felt deft fingers working at the knot,  and then suddenly it slithered out from under his collar, and joined the jacket on the ground. “I’ve kind of wanted to do that for a while.”

“Really?” Cas felt a swooping sensation in his stomach. It felt not unlike flying, in the split second of weightlessness before he dove, kestrel-like, towards the earth.

“Mmm-hmm.” Dean resumed kissing his neck. “This, too.” It dawned on Cas that he could suddenly feel air rather than fabric against his skin; Dean had begun the methodical, serious work of unbuttoning his shirt, with his mouth punctuating the thud and whisper of each button that he opened.

Throughout the entire encounter, Cas had kept himself mostly still, starry-eyed and tongue-tied, with both hands on Dean’s hips. But this felt like permission, and he slid one hand up under Dean’s t-shirt, drawing it upwards in a long, languid path until it came to rest against the broad plain of muscle between the shoulder blades, then up to the curve at the back of his neck. Then down again. His hand settled in the small of Dean’s back, where sweat made the fabric of the t-shirt cling. He felt the muscles working, felt the blood coursing up close to the skin, giving off heat, felt the fine hairs, virtually invisible to the human eye and soft as down, under his fingertips. Cas felt and felt and felt it all, and suddenly, something in him broke completely. Dean was giving him what he had wanted and never dared to voice, and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t _fair_ , and he had to give something back.

“I almost forgot you had a tattoo,” Dean said, through the thunder in Cas’ ears. He ran his hand along it, smiling at the way Cas twitched and then relaxed at the touch. “Enochian?”

“Yes. Dean…”

“Mmm?” Dean had slipped further down, kissing the vault of each rib, before resting his head where they suddenly stopped, and the plane of Cas’ chest joined his stomach. His stubble scratched the skin there, and Cas lost his train of thought for a moment.

“Dean, let me tell you something.”

Dean raised his eyes without lifting his head. Cas lost his train of thought again.

“What?” Dean prompted.

“Angels have one hundred and twelve names.”

Dean laughed, startled. “Okay, that is...not where I thought you were going with that.”

“Listen. Angels have one hundred and twelve names,” Cas said again. _Or, I suppose I have one hundred and thirteen_ , he thought, slightly light-headed. “Some of them are still in use, some have died out. One hundred and eleven of them can be known, and one...one is secret. No one knows it but the angel and God.”

Dean went very still. “Your name isn’t Castiel?”

“No, it is Castiel. That name is the name of my function, and my function is who I am. So that is my name.” He ran his hand through Dean’s hair, and wondered if Dean would be cutting it soon. It was very soft. “I want to tell you the others.”

Dean had begun to trace delicate patterns across the expanse of skin between Cas’ shoulders, following the line of the clavicle to the scalloped hollow at the base of his throat. “Okay,” Dean said, and began his slow descent.

And so, in between little gasps and sighs, he laid all of his names out like offerings at Dean’s feet. By the tenth name (“Qafsiel.” “Qafsiel,” Dean repeated, kissing the left hipbone), Cas was worried he’d forget some of them. By the fiftieth (this one in a long-dead language, which Dean dutifully repeated, only stumbling a little), Dean had somehow slid his hand between the fabric of Cas’ trousers and his underwear, and was trailing his fingertips lightly, excruciatingly lightly, along the bulge there. By the seventy-fifth (“Angel of Temperance.” “Angel of...Temperance? _Really_?”), his hand had moved until it was against skin, his grip firm but unhurried. Cas didn’t realize he’d stopped speaking until Dean leaned in close, hot against his side, and said:

“Cas?”

“Yes-- _Ah!_ Yes, Dean?”

“You stopped at ninety.” Cas couldn’t see his face but he could hear the amusement in his voice.

“Did I?” His back arched involuntarily.

“Yes.”

“Sorry, um….” He closed his eyes, trying to remember where he’d left off, trying to remember who he was. “Angel of Tears.” How could he have forgotten that?

“Angel of Tears? Hmm.” Dean did some sort of motion with his thumb then, and Cas let out a curse in his native tongue that would have caused his old comrades to blush. “Was that one of your names?”

“N...no, that was...I’ll explain some other time.”

“Alright,” Dean said, and settled his head back down against the feverish line of Cas’ throat, watching his own handiwork.

At one hundred and seven, Dean kissed away the noises Cas gave up to the night air, but he did not stop, he did not stop. The one hundred and eleventh name was almost lost in the shout Cas bit back as he came, every muscle seeming to spasm at once and then uncoil. He knew what to expect, of course, and yet this time seemed as different to the other time as it was possible to be. Everything in him seemed to be anointed, every human nerve to sing, every angelic particle to reverberate.

“I feel like I know you much better now,” Dean said, smiling slyly and wiping his hand on his thigh. “Seeing as I know all your names.”

“No, not all of them,” Cas said, with sunspots still dancing in front of his eyes. He pulled Dean close and kissed him like it was his new religion. And then, he realized, it was. “Let me tell you the last one.”

“But I thought you said no one can know that one except you and God.”

“Dean. Let me tell you the last one.”

Dean swallowed. “Okay.”

So Cas did. In the blue-barred dark, he leaned in close, took a breath, and whispered his secret name into Dean’s ear. And Dean repeated it back.

********

A little later, in the hours before dawn, Cas said: “But what about you? Isn’t there something you want?”

“I already got everything I wanted,” Dean said. And he fell asleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The 112 names of angels is actually an extrapolation from a ritual text on adjuring angels that someone I know studied. Only one specific angel is named in that, but I thought "Hey, why not take this legitimate piece of research and use it to write incredibly blasphemous pornography?" Because **I am a terrible person** , whose extremely rigorous religious upbringing did not have the effect my family might have hoped._   
>  _I apologize to the person in question._
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> _I hope you enjoyed. *runs away*_
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>  ** _ETA:_** _Someone on tumblr asked why Castiel always smells of ozone in fan fics. I believe it is because that is the smell of lightning strikes (I'm from somewhere where they are very common) and cathode ray tube TV sets (which is one of the ways he communicated on the show, IIRC). Just my thoughts on that._


	9. The High Priestess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannah is still the best, even if Dean doesn't see it yet.

Dean woke at dawn. The bright morning light stained the inside of his eyelids blood-red and he blinked himself awake. At some point, he had been moved to the opposite bed and put under the covers, which startled him, because he had no recollection of it happening. He was alone, which should not have startled him, but did. The other bed was pristine, as though it had never been used. His heart thudded, aching dully in his chest. Cas was gone. Of course he was gone--he’d been very clear and specific about leaving first thing in the morning.

_What did you expect, dumbass? He’s a fucking soldier in the middle of a war. You think that he’d go AWOL just because you had a roll in the hay?_

Anyway...shit. That was not what Dean had planned when he’d knocked on the door to Cas’ room. At least, it mostly wasn’t what he’d planned. He really had just wanted to try and clear the air between them, to wish Cas well, and to tell him that he understood. He’d wanted to apologize, but he hadn’t anticipated what form that apology might take. But he’d always been so bad with words, and there was the lingering air of ‘last-night-on-earth’ hanging over them. It was probably their fifth last night on earth, Dean realized, but this time he’d actually done something about it.

There had been one night, several years ago, in the nicest hotel that Rexford, Idaho could claim, where they had almost, _almost_...Dean had bandaged Cas’ sprained hand, had helped him dress for bed, because his shoulder was too bruised for him to lift his arm. And the whole time Cas had looked at him, so softly and so close, so close. Dean could have, then. He could have. But in the end, he had not.  Dean hadn’t had the heart let himself have what he wanted, not when he had caused Cas so much pain and could do nothing to ease it. It wouldn’t have been right. It wouldn’t have been fair. But was it either of those things now?

Dean rolled out of bed mechanically, stood mechanically, looked around the room mechanically. Then his eyes fell on a small square of white motel stationery on the desk by the door, and the world snapped into focus. In two strides he had crossed the room and picked it up.

“Will return to you shortly” was all it said, in careful, neat handwriting, followed by a symbol Dean had seen somewhere before, that looked rushed by comparison. It took him a moment to realize that it was the first letter of Castiel’s name, written in Enochian. For some reason this made him slightly breathless. He looked at the note a long time, then folded it up and put it in the pocket of his jeans.

Dean knew he should get going. There was much to compel him out the door. He needed breakfast, for one thing--the tins of soup that Elle and had managed to procure the night before hadn’t made the most satisfying meal. The hotel clerk would be regaining consciousness any time now, and he wanted to be long gone before they had to explain anything that went down last night. He had to get coolant into the car and check to see that the vapor lock from yesterday hadn’t caused any lasting damage. Getting the correct parts for the Impala was going to be considerably more difficult now, so he needed to make sure everything was in working order.

But he lingered. Because when he left this room, eventually he’d have to think about what actually happened, and how he felt about it. When he left this room, he would have to think about how Cas felt about it, and about him now. Cas had said...Cas had said that he loved Dean above all things, but did that mean that he’d actually just let Dean do whatever he liked, regardless of what Cas wanted? _Shit._

 _No._ That couldn’t be right. Because Cas had reached for him like a drowning man. Cas had also given out his true name, freely; he’d insisted on it. He’d said it like he wanted to give Dean something back, as though he was thanking him. Dean heard it reverberating in his head, resonating in every hollow of his body until he buzzed like a violin string. He felt it flare like a pillar of light into every part of him, into the dark, squirming center of his damned soul, burning everything clean.

He stumbled out into the faded courtyard of the motel. Sam would already be awake, and while he didn’t relish the idea of trying to explain anything to Sam, he also didn’t feel much like coming up with elaborate excuses either. He quietly opened the door to their room, expecting to find Sam sitting at the table, smirking over his cornflakes (dry) and Fresca ( _Fresca, seriously?_ ).

What he saw instead was Sam, looking equal parts confused and irritated, leaning against a wall;  Elle, sitting on the bed that Dean had vacated in the middle of the night, eating cereal directly from the box, with the expression of someone watching an extremely interesting movie; Cas with his back to the door, thank god; and someone Dean did not recognize, a handsome, slightly wiry man with dark eyes who was watching Cas in a way that made alarm bells sound distantly in Dean’s head.

They were clearly in the middle of a tense discussion, and for a heartbeat no one noticed him. Then Elle caught his eye. “Oh, hey, Dean,” she said, around a mouthful of cornflakes. She held the box out to him. “Breakfast?”

Everyone else turned to look at him, then. Sam’s expression did not change. Surely he’d been wondering where Dean had gone. But all Dean could read there at the moment was simmering frustration, as illustrated by the tight line of Sam’s mouth and the rigidity of his posture. If he had any questions about Dean’s late night activities, he was saving them for later.

The dark-eyed man glanced towards him with a look of wary recognition, which made no sense, because Dean had never seen him before in his life. And finally Cas turned to look at him, and Dean’s heart leapt directly into his throat. But Cas had the same slightly sad, intent look in his eyes that he always did when he looked at Dean.

“Dean, you remember Hannah,” Cas said, with no preamble. He tilted his chin towards the dark-eyed man and Dean did a double-take. _Hannah_? Hannah was one of those complete-your-mission-screw-everything-else angels. Hannah had also been in a distinctly female vessel before.

“Uh. Yeah, we’ve met. You asked Cas to run me through with an angel blade, as I recall.”

“Dean,” Cas said, with a note of warning.

Hannah blinked, then looked at the ground. “Yes. I apologize. I understand now that my demand was...ill-conceived.” Her eyes flickered to Cas for the briefest instant, then away. “I’ve improved in my negotiation techniques somewhat since assuming command of Heaven.”

“ _You’re_ running Heaven now?”

“Dean,” Cas said again, the warning note much stronger this time.

“Yes, Castiel has been an excellent teacher to me, despite our different viewpoints,” Hannah said, and looked at Cas again with a gentle warmth that Dean did not associate with angels--or rather, with angels besides Cas.

“So you’re the one who keeps calling him back up, huh? Trying to get him back on-side? Heaven or bust? Forget the earth, right? Who cares?” Dean said, crossing his arms and feeling a disturbingly petulant feeling rising within him.

“Dean, that’s _enough_ ,” Cas finally snapped. “We’ve already discussed this, at length.”

Silence descended and threatened to smother everyone in the room.

Hannah would not rise to the bait, however, but looked at Dean calmly. “I am sorry your assessment of my character is so low. I think you’ll find that I’m deeply concerned with the fate of both my home, and yours. It is possible to be dedicated to more than one thing, you know. Though, yes, I admit, we tend to favor our own family. Surely that’s a feeling you’re familiar with.”

Hannah turned to Cas again. She had that eerie stillness that used to define all of Cas’ movements, back when he was new to his vessel, when it was something he operated rather than inhabited. He often still had the unsettling serenity of an angel, but the body was his now, and it showed. “And as to your earlier point, Castiel volunteered to help Heaven’s fight against our old enemy. I did not... _call him up_. Castiel wants to save the world as much as you do. As much as I do. As much as all our family does.”

“Yeah, about that…” Sam cut in, but Dean couldn’t contain himself.

“Some sense of family you’ve got. You torture your own.”

“Not any longer. Torture has no place in Heaven. Hell may have created in our image, but we are allowed to change that image. We _are_ allowed to learn from our mistakes.”  She fixed her eyes on Dean, and he swore he could see the blue-white flare of grace there for a moment. He flinched back, in spite of himself. “And as I understand it, your sense of family is largely at fault for our current calamity. So watch your mouth.”

“She’s right,” Elle said, dusting the cornflakes from her jeans.

“Shut up,” Dean snapped. Anger and humiliation and guilt wrestled for dominance of his emotions.

“No, Dean, I won’t. Sam told me a little bit about you two’s family moment all those weeks back. The way I see it is, you guys broke the world. So I think you’re the one that’s going to shut up and listen to the nice ancient celestial beings when they tell you their plan to get everyone out of this mess. You and your brother.” She rounded on Sam, and Dean saw him flinch away slightly, despite having a foot of height on her. Dean had not seen her so angry before. She had always been so amiable--changeable of mood, sure, but largely easy-going. But now, Dean could feel her rage radiating from her, shimmering like a mirage in the desert sun. He blinked and held up his hands.

“Alright, alright...I’m sorry.” Dean shook his head, defeated. “You’re right. We need to do something, we need to fix it.” Cas opened his mouth to say something, but Dean cut in. “ _We_ need to fix it, Cas. Or at least help fix it. Because we are the ones that screwed up in the first place.”

“Excellent. Eat some cereal, Dean. You’ll get low blood sugar.” Elle held the box out to him and looked at him pointedly until he’d put a handful in his mouth.

“If we could get back to the subject at hand?” Cas interjected, sounding like he was done with every single being in the room. “Or do you have any more frankly bewildering feelings you’d like to not actually discuss? Take your time.”

“Sorry,” they all said, simultaneously.

“Um,” Sam began again, looking more than a little unnerved by the scene unfolding in front of him. “So, about this plan to save the world. You, uh...you said you’ve gotten more firepower, but you need more. What does that mean, exactly?”

“We have two archangels preparing to go to war on our behalf,” Hannah said calmly. Next to her, Cas’ eyes widened in a way that Dean would have found comical, had he not just heard the term _archangels_. “But that will not be enough, not if the witch is currently controlling the Darkness through the Book of the Damned, as you have suggested. One of the archangels has already told us that the Darkness is...amoral. It does not care about good or evil. It wants only to spread. To shroud and dissolve all before it. But this witch sounds...power-hungry, and while I cannot begin to guess her end goal, I think she will make our work even more difficult. ”

“I’m sorry, could you go back to the part where you said you had two archangels on the bench?” Dean asked, staring daggers at Cas. Cas was having trouble meeting his gaze.

“It’s a long story…” Cas began, clearing his throat.

“I’ll bet. What the hell, man? You didn’t think to share this with the rest of the class?” That stung in a way Dean couldn’t quite define, and also caused a ripple of fear through him at the thought.

“Cas, you’re not talking--you’re not talking Michael and Lucifer are you?” Sam asked. He sounded as though he’d been punched in the gut.

“Yes,” Cas said, looking away.

“What, like, the Devil? _The_ Devil?” Elle interjected, aghast.

“Yeah, that Devil. The one we put back in his Cage a few years ago. Remember that?” Dean kept Cas pinned in place with his eyes.

“Wait,” Sam said, suddenly incandescent with an idea. “Wait. Maryland. Ilchester, Maryland. Remember when I said that Maryland hadn’t been touched by the Darkness, and I couldn’t figure out why, because there was no Men of Letters presence there?”

“It’s the entrance to the Cage.” Dean said. “Son of a bitch.” He had to sit down.

“Yes, alright. I wasn’t going to mention it,” Cas said, looking narrowly at Hannah. “But yes. I secured a deal with Lucifer and Michael to aid us in our battle. _In return for their help_ , Hannah and I agreed that neither would have to return to the Cage, but that both would be banished from this dimension for eternity. If we win, we rid ourselves of both the Darkness _and_ the two archangels who wanted to bring about the Apocalypse. Forgive me, but I fail to see how that’s anything but a good outcome.”

“Yeah, but you have a history of making _terrible_ deals,” Dean said, and then regretted his harsh tone when he saw Cas deflate slightly.

“I...I know. But I’ve changed since then. As I’ve said before, I may be a slow learner, but I do learn eventually. All that time around Crowley, all that time in Hell, has had the advantage of teaching me how to make a water-tight contract. The archangels are ours.” Something cold and hard glittered in Cas’ eyes, a wolfish satisfaction that made Dean shiver in spite of the heat. “More to the point, they are _mine_. I adjured them both my will. It was difficult and...and costly, but I’ve told them to defeat the Darkness on behalf of Heaven and earth. And so they will, or die trying.” He looked at Dean earnestly, then. “And so will I, Dean. So will we all.”

“Yes,” Hannah said, looking at Dean as well. “With the archangels on our side, we significantly increase our odds of success, but we are still outmatched.” Hannah looked at Sam. “Particularly with what you told me about the man who was sent to attack you and your brother last night.” She shook her head, clearly puzzling over something. “Metatron is hoping to gain not just your deaths but your souls. I cannot guess why. Perhaps in retribution for you taking his grace, Castiel. Or perhaps he has a plan we do not know about. And if he is working with Rowena, then we must find a way to even the chances, or we are all damned.”

“But what is there that can equal the strength of two archangels?” Sam asked.

“And what will you do with the Darkness once you’ve taken it out?” Dean asked, feeling a sense of dread begin to crowd in and gnaw at him from all sides. “I mean, your dad had to lock that shit away inside his favorite son, and look how well that turned out. Someone...someone will have to take this on again, and...whoever it is...they’ll have to be put somewhere they can never escape. Someone’s going to have to take on another Mark, and then they’ve got to be taken off the board.”

Cas shook his head emphatically, and strode over to Dean. “No. I know what you’re thinking, and no. You will not take this burden on again. I won’t allow it.”

“No? Then who? It’s got to go _somewhere_ , Cas. Someone’s got to take it, and it might as well be me. At least this time I know what I’m in for.”

“Dean, _no_. I’ve already...I’ve already made arrangements.”

Dean drew back, and his face had gone hard. “Oh, please tell me you’re not talking about you taking this on. Oh my god, you are.”

Hannah looked as alarmed as Dean felt. “Castiel, _no_. That’s madness!”

“Thank you!” Dean said, gesturing towards Hannah. “Listen to her, _Castiel_. It’s a terrible idea and you’re not doing it.”

“Dean, Hannah. It’s the only way. I can’t ask anyone else to do this, knowing what it does, what it is. I’m happy to do it to spare you the burden.” He looked at Dean, and his eyes were all the oceans of the world, bearing Dean down into their depths. He blinked. “Or anybody else.”

“Why does it have to be one person?” Elle asked, into the tense atmosphere. She shoved the cereal box into Sam’s hands. “And why won’t any of you eat any damn breakfast?”

“Wait, what?” Sam asked, looking at the cereal box as though it was a piece of alien technology.

“Which part? The part where breakfast is the most important meal of the day, or the part where you’re overlooking the obvious question of: why does this ‘terrible burden’ have to fall to one person? Or one angel? You said that Lucifer gave it to Cain, and Cain shared it with Dean, so why not share it with a bunch of people? Lighten the load, you know? Why build one dam to hold back the flood when you can channel the flood through a thousand little canals? Then it isn’t a flood at all.”

  
“What?” Dean asked. His jaw had gone slightly slack.

“ _Okay_ , it’s not a great metaphor. Did you miss the part where I had to learn to walk and talk again? My brain doesn’t always come up with the best words, so sue me.”

“No,” Sam said slowly, as the idea took hold. “No, I get what you mean. You’re saying that the effects of the Darkness could be diminished if we spread it out equally across a bunch of souls. That way no one person is forced to take on the full weight of it. No one loses themselves to it, because no one has enough of it to corrupt them. Each soul carries their fair share. A million locks and a million keys.”

“Well, one thing Heaven has is an abundance of souls,” Hannah said. She was clearly lost in thought. “I suppose it would be in my power, or within Heaven’s power, to compel all of the souls we contain to take on a fragment of the Darkness.” She shook her head, grimly. “But I can’t do that. It would be wrong, and against everything we are trying to do. But we could ask them. We could ask them to make a choice...of their own free will. And all the angels, too.” For the first time, her expression seemed bright and hopeful, and she looked at Dean with such an open, honest look that he almost regretted thinking she was a dick before. “We would have to allow them more freedom within Heaven if we do this, of course. We will have to tell them where they are, and why, if they are to truly make a free choice. This will fundamentally change the nature of Heaven, you understand. We will have to alter….many things. But it may be worth it, after all. And besides,” Hannah added, looking at Cas with a raised eyebrow. “Changes like this have already begun, thanks to you and your...habitual disregard for rules, Castiel.”

Dean knew there was something more to the comment that Hannah had just aimed at Cas, but he could not focus on it. He felt cautious enthusiasm start to take root, and it filled up all of his thoughts. _Anything to spare Cas_ , he thought, Anything. It seemed Hannah had the same idea, and he looked at her gratefully. “That sounds like a plan.”

“Dean…”

“Cas, no. No, okay? Hannah’s got a pretty solid plan here. I think you need to listen to your boss.”

“She is not my boss,” Cas said, his voice full of grit and ice.

“No, I’m not.”

“Fine, whatever. The point is, this is not on you, and if you try to put it on you, then so help me…”

Cas put up his hands in an exasperated show of surrender. “Alright, fine. I can see that I have been outvoted in the matter.” He looked between Hannah and Dean then, with an unreadable look on his face. “And perhaps you’re right. Entrusting it to one person--or one angel--is a great risk. It overcame the best of all the archangels, and the Righteous Man, as well. I fear I would be unequal to the task.”

“Cas,” Dean began.

“Castiel,” Hannah said, at the same time.

Hannah and Dean both stopped and looked at each other briefly, then away.

“Right, so, that’s settled, then,” Elle broke in. She and Sam had been trading glances throughout the entire exchange, Dean realized, somewhat miserably.  She stretched, lithe and easy as she stood. “Castiel won’t be volunteering as tribute. Dean won’t be volunteering, either. Hannah will be working on getting all the souls upstairs on board with our plan. That about cover it?”

“Not quite,” Sam said. Most of his anger and frustration seemed gone, now, leaving only the middle-distance stare that meant he was mulling over a problem that he hadn’t quite figured out how to formulate yet. “Sharing the Darkness between all the souls in Heaven is a great idea for when we’ve _actually beaten the Darkness_. But it doesn’t actually give us any extra firepower. We’re still down two archangels and a deity.”

“The souls in Heaven power us,” Hannah said. “Just as souls power Hell and Purgatory. Souls are extremely...potent. Angelic grace and the human soul are two different aspects of the same light of Creation. If we could somehow harness the power of them in a great...a great explosion or...or a flood, to use your metaphor, we might be able to win.”

“Might,” Dean said, gruffly. He found himself watching Cas (but didn’t he always?), who had dropped out of the conversation entirely and had assumed the stone-faced, soldier-of-God expression he wore when he wanted to say something very badly but would not let himself do it. “Cas, anything you want to add here?”

“I...no. I agree with Sam. Your plan is a sound one for after we have won, but we need a, um...nuclear option.”

Hannah turned to Cas, then, squinting in confusion. “That is the second time you’ve mentioned nuclear weapons, Castiel. But we know that they would be ineffective in this battle.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Cas said, apologetically. “We need something as strong on the metaphysical level as a nuclear weapon would be in the physical one. Though hopefully not as destructive.”

“What we need,” Sam said, and his eyes were alight, “is creation, not destruction.”

“I don’t follow,” Hannah said.

“ _Creation_ ,” Sam repeated. “You said grace and souls are different aspects of Creation. What we need are more souls. Like, a _lot_ more souls.”

“If you’re talking about popping Purgatory again, forget it.” Dean crossed his arms. This was getting out of hand. “It’s bad enough we’ve got the Apocalypse twins out of their cage, even if you have clipped their wings. Throwing Purgatory in the mix is just asking for a clusterfuck. An even bigger one, I mean.”

“Not Purgatory, no,” Hannah said, shaking her head. She ran her hand along her stubbled jaw, a jarringly human trait that she must have acquired from watching Cas. “Purgatory isn’t our remit. But there is something...something more along the lines of what is rightfully ours.”  
“The Veil,” Cas said, and grabbed Hannah’s shoulder. Dean’s jaw clenched reflexively, but he made himself relax. “You’re talking about the Veil.”

“Oh, my god,” Sam said.

Hannah nodded, beaming a little. “Yes, exactly. Since Metatron cast us out of Heaven, the Veil has been collecting souls with nowhere to go, building up pressure all the while. Exactly like a dam. Recently, though, there have been cracks. Perhaps Metatron’s spell is decaying. But of late, souls have begun slipping in. Only a handful at a time, you understand. Jimmy Novak’s wife appeared not so long ago, for example. Each time it happens, we notice a definite spike in the power of Heaven. Each time it happens, our grace become a little less depleted.”

“But Metatron said he’d shut down the ‘big levers’,” Cas said, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. “The Angel Tablet said the spell was irreversible. Even if it eventually decays to nothing, it still won’t help us. We need the firepower _now_. The Darkness is already dissolving away everything it touches, and the untouched places are teetering toward disaster. Detroit is already burnt to the ground, and Kansas City is soon to follow.”

“A spell?” Elle piped up, rummaging through her duffle bag. “Every spell has a foil. Even if it can’t be directly reversed, it can be changed enough to be countered. We may not be able to actually undo this guy’s spellwork, but I promise you, it can be bypassed. It can be diminished so far that it barely even registers.”

“Elle, you’re saying you can bypass the work of the _Scribe of God_?” Sam asked, his eyes widening.

“Spellwork is just….it’s just figuring out how things work. It’s a lot like engineering. Not that I’m an engineer. Or, at least, I don’t _think_ I was one. But yeah. It’s just asking the universe, or whatever you want to call it, to arrange itself in a way that you need. You have to ask the right question, the right way. This guy’s arranged the universe in a way that sucks. I can rearrange it for you.” She pulled out several small books. One of them was old, very old, and housed in a fragrant cedar wood box. The other two were ordinary spiral bound notebooks filled with hand-written notes.

“What’s that?” Dean asked.

“These? These are...heh. They’re equations, for lack of a better word. Equations for arranging the universe. I had a lot of free time.”  
“You’ve created a magical practice from scratch?” Cas asked, and the surprise was clear in his voice. He stared at her from the corner of his eye. “Who are you?”  
She shrugged and looked down, smiling a little shyly. “I am who I am. Now, tell me about this so-called irreversible spell.” She grinned outright. “You want your souls? I can get them for you wholesale.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I don't know if my thoughts on handling the Darkness make much sense, but for context, this was the quote that I had in mind, from Mikhail Bulgakov's **The Master and Margarita** (which you should absolutely not read if you value your sanity, says the one who's read it four times):_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> "But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if  
> evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows  
> disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the  
> shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings.  
> Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because  
> of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.”
> 
>  
> 
> _Hope you enjoyed._


	10. The Hierophant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Hannah start to understand each other. Sam and Cas have a heart-to-heart.

Hannah healed the hotel clerk before they left. She restored him to full health, and even going so far as to remove the plaque that coated the inside of his arteries. She then gently blurred and excised his memories of the last 24 hours, so that thoughts of the monstrous beating he had sustained would not cause him any recurring trauma. The patterns of her grace were lovely to see--swirling Arabesques in pinks and blues, that lit up nerve endings and crackled like fireworks, leaving everything whole and clean in their wake.

“There,” Hannah said, depositing him on the bed of the room that Elle had vacated. “He should wake up in the next few hours. He’ll wonder what happened to the room you were in, and to the office, but he himself should be pristine.”

“Hannah, thank you,” Castiel said, squeezing her hand gratefully. Behind him, he could sense Dean’s eyes on the spot where skin met skin. On another plane, where Dean could not see, the tips of Hannah’s feathers brushed against the ruined curve of Castiel’s wings, sending out another couple-colored wave of grace. He felt the roots of them stir to life, faintly, and he sighed. “You’ve done a far better than I could have done.”

Color rose to her cheeks, under the stubble. Her vessel was very handsome, just as the last one had been very beautiful. “Of course, Castiel. I am happy to help.”

Dean cleared his throat, too loudly. “Yeah, that’s good work, Hannah. But, uh, we should probably get this show on the road, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Hannah said, stepping away from Castiel slightly and straightening her shoulders. “I have had Hadraniel open another portal a few miles away. The ley lines aren’t as favorable here as they are at the main Gate, but it will serve for a little while before it closes. And it will spare you having to drive that vehicle of yours through any more Darkened areas, Castiel.”

“Hannah...”

“No, Castiel. You cannot risk it. Everything is being eaten away. All the livestock is dead, and people are joining them, all the grain  is withering to nothing, all the buildings and roads collapsing in on themselves. I have looked and seen as much as I can. You may be able to withstand it for a time, but sooner or later you will be stranded. Who can say how long it would take you to reach the main Gate on foot?”

 _And who can say what you would be by the time you did?_ was the unspoken addition to her speech.

Castiel looked away, chastened. “Hannah, I understand. But I will not be coming with you.”

Hannah squinted in confusion.

“You won’t?” Dean broke in, and his voice seemed even rougher than usual.

“No, I was--I was hoping to accompany you to the Men of Letters chapter house so that I can understand the nature of what Elle is trying to do. To see if I could be of any use.”

“But…” Hannah began, choosing her words carefully. “You are my second-in-command, Castiel. And you understand the workings of human souls far better than I do. If I am to try and negotiate with the humans in our care, I would like to do it at your side.”

“Hannah, you give yourself too little credit. You were right before. Your negotiation skills have improved dramatically since I have known you. And you are the first angel I have ever known to put the well-being of its vessel above their mission. You released Caroline because you empathized with her. You understand human souls perfectly well, and you have the compassion to deal with them accordingly.”

“Wait. You _let her go_?” Dean asked, startled. “She didn’t die?” Something in his eyes simultaneously softened and sharpened, became intent, as though he was seeing Hannah for the first time.

“No, she...she missed her home, and her husband, and I couldn’t in good conscience bring her any more grief.”

“Huh. But what about this poor bastard?” Dean gestured vaguely towards Hannah, taking in her vessel from boot-tip to crown. “How does he feel about being chained to a comet?”

“This man chooses to stay with me,” Hannah said, with a frisson of defiance in her voice. Castiel fought back the urge to intervene. Whatever this conversation was, it seemed important that Dean and Hannah had it, unimpeded. “Each morning, I ask him if he would like to return, and each morning he asks me if the mission is complete. When I tell him no, he always chooses to stay. This man was a soldier in a war on earth; he understands the nature of combat. But I always ask. Always. This is what I require of any angel who takes a vessel now. Consent cannot be given in perpetuity. It must be constantly sought and freely given.”

Dean nodded, and Castiel could feel a subtle but definite change in the pressure of the room, as though a storm that had been threatening to inundate the world had suddenly cleared away. “Well, what do you know. Peace, love and understanding, huh?”

Cas and Hannah both looked at him with heads canted to the side, which caused Dean to fall into the kind of easy, loose-limbed laughter that Castiel had not seen from him in a long time. Something warm bloomed in his chest.

“It’s a….oh, never mind. I’m just glad to hear things are starting to get less fucked upstairs, Hannah.”

“Thank...you?” She looked towards Castiel as though for confirmation that this had been the correct thing to say, and he smiled encouragingly at her. “Castiel, are you sure you won’t come with me?”

“No. Let me speak to Elle and understand what we need for her spell. And what the consequences may be in casting it. I will also see if we can perform a tracking spell for either Rowena or Metatron. Once I have all the information I need, we can finally make our move.”

Hannah nodded. “Very well. You’re right. In the meantime, I will begin my talks with our souls. But I fear we don’t have much time. The undarkened states are slowly being covered; the boundaries are becoming less defined. It’s as though--as though whatever is holding it back is becoming less focused.”  
“What does that mean?” Dean asked.

“It means that either Rowena can no longer control the Darkness, or that she is turning her attention to something else. She must have felt the shock waves from the archangels’ ascension. She must know we plan to oppose her somehow. And so whatever move it is that she’s planning to make, we must get there first.”

“I agree,” Cas said. “Give me a few days. Will the temporary Gate last that long?”

“It should,” Hannah said, nodding. “Though I could not guarantee it for much longer than that.” She smiled at him then. “Alright. Thank you, brother. I will see you soon.” She turned on her heel and strode out the door. She and Dean gave each other one short nod as she passed. Castiel had the distinct impression that the two had had an entire conversation, full of admonitions and strange intimacies, none of which he understood, in that simple exchange of gestures. He wondered again briefly if they had slid towards a black hole.

“So,” Dean said, rubbing the back of his neck. “You’re, uh, coming with us?”

Suddenly an inexplicable feeling of uncertainty gripped Cas and would not let go. He found it hard to look at Dean, for the first time since his disastrous attempt at godhood, and he did not understand why. He had not betrayed Dean, not recently. He still carried the burden of his past failures, cilice-like, where they whispered their names with spiked tongues against his heart; but those were old sins and he did not speak of them. And yet he felt it, sharp and pervasive, the desire to sink to the ground and cling to Dean’s knees, to apologize, to confess everything,  to explain the solitude that had always been his fate, really, always. It was his name, it was what he was, it was what he had been made for, it...

_What had Hannah said about the uselessness of penance?_

Castiel straightened his spine and searched Dean’s eyes for the sliver of liminal space where soul and body overlapped. _There it was._

“Yes, of course I’m coming with you.” He faltered. “If...if you don’t mind.”

Now it was Dean’s turn to look away, with his arms crossed defensively. He dipped his chin towards his chest and looked at Cas from under his brows. “Why would I mind?”  
“I...I don’t know,” Cas admitted, swallowing around the lump in his throat.

Dean dropped his arms and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “Look, man, I just want to make sure that, you know...you’re only doing what you want to do. I don’t want you to feel compelled to come with me just because I want you to come. I know you’d planned to go back on up this morning and...just. You don’t---you don’t have to stick around on my account, okay? You don’t have to follow me around because of…” Dean cleared his throat and Cas could see the blush he had so admired the night before inch across the curve of Dean’s cheekbones, spreading to inflame the tips of his ears in a way that Cas found infinitely fascinating.

“I would be lying if I said that wasn’t part of my reasoning,” Cas said. “And, as I don’t feel like lying, I won’t say it.”

“Damn it, I knew it,” Dean said, and there was a look of peculiar sadness on his face, a kind of bleakness that Cas had often seen from the corner of his eye when he looked at Dean, but which was usually gone by the time he’d turned his head. (Dean always underestimated the precision of his eyesight.) “I _knew_ it. God damn it, I’m such an asshole.”

“Wait, what? Why?” Cas stepped forward until he could look at Dean eye-to-eye, his earlier qualms about doing so dissolving in an instant. Dean swallowed, and his gaze flickered downwards towards Cas’ mouth before returning to his eyes--a habitual motion that Cas had always taken it for a meaningless physical tic. Now he felt the ghost of spent kisses in that look. He saw a golden thread of palinopsia that spread like a flame, that filled his mouth, wrapped itself around his tongue, set him aglow. “Was something wrong with what happened?”

“No! Nothing was _wrong_ with it, Cas, except for the fact that I’m apparently really damn good at leading you astray without even trying.” Dean turned away, stalking out into the parking lot.

“Astray?” Cas asked, catching up to him. “You didn’t _lead_ me anywhere, Dean. I thought I was fairly clear on this point.” He grabbed Dean by the shoulder and spun him around so they were face-to-face. “I will _not_ be led. Show me some respect. I was right there with you.”

“Yeah, but...”

Cas curled his fingers around the back of Dean’s neck and kissed him then, with more force than he had dared to show last night. It was inelegant and bold, a tactical move rather than a romantic one, and it worked. When he pulled away, Cas was rewarded with the startled, dreamy look that meant that Dean’s brain had momentarily shut down, and his mouth along with it. “Dean, stop talking. Get in your car right now and drive. I will follow you.” Without waiting for a response, Cas pushed past him and marched to his own car.

It occurred to him, as he started the engine, that he had just pulled that maneuver in full view of the Impala, where Sam and Elle were both sitting. He could not say for certain if they’d seen, but, judging by the looks on their faces when he hazarded a glance, it was within the realm of possibility.

On a whim, Cas pressed ‘Play’ on the tape deck. The blown-out speakers crackled to life and the strains of a song from the 1960s began to play. Once, just after Cas had gotten this car, Dean had given him a tape of different songs, which he’d called a mixtape. It seemed brand new, unlike the ones Cas had seen in the glove box of the Impala. Dean had slipped into Cas’ hands with instructions to “Educate yourself a little, man.”

Cas had put the tape in and never removed it. It was perhaps his hundredth time hearing this track, yet he was no closer to understanding what it meant, with its references to thieves and bare-footed servants and approaching riders, punctuated by a high keening guitar that Dean had proclaimed “awesome”. Perhaps it was like the ecstatic revelatory babble spouted by prophets. Not for angels.

But, Cas mused, as he followed the black rumble of the Impala down the road, as with so many things that weren’t for angels, he liked it all the same.

****

The Ohio chapter house was not a house at all, it turned out, nor was it actually in the town of Lebanon proper. Rather, it was a small abandoned church, in Carpenter Gothic, situated in an expanse of woodland about six miles away. Its lean, spare lines and steep angles had softened under the green sprawl of morning glory vines and generations of bird nests. It had been white, at one point, but had taken on a silver-gray patina, and seemed to be sinking slowly back into the forest from which it had come. Whatever warding and sigils protected it from prying eyes could not be seen from the outside.

“This place looks like it’s about two strong gusts of wind away from falling down,” Elle commented, unfolding herself from the back seat with a yawn. She slept a great deal more than most humans he had met, Cas noticed. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Literally nothing we do is safe,” Sam pointed out. He shot a glance at Cas, who remained leaning against the hood of the Continental a few yards away, basking in the brindled sunlight. “But you know, you’re right, we should probably take a look around before we start setting up camp. Cas, you want to give me a hand?”

Dean, who had been stooped over the open hood of the Impala,  straightened so quickly that he hit his head with a resounding thud. Cas winced.

“ _Ow_ ,” Dean said, rubbing the spot where metal had collided with bone. “I can help you with recon, Sam. Cas, you can...you can just…”

“It’s alright, Dean, I don’t mind.” Cas cut in. He frowned a little in confusion, but stood and walked towards the church before Dean could formulate a coherent response.

“Yeah, Dean, you’re busy looking after your Baby,” Sam said, and his smile was all teeth. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt you when you’re in the zone. Cas and I can handle this.”

Their shoes crunched on the rich bed of fallen oak leaves and pine needles, and Cas noticed that Sam wasn’t making any particular effort to tread quietly. Sam veered away from the back of the church, to the wildly overgrown plot of land that abutted it. It must have once been a garden, judging by the remnants of an old stone wall and the riotous tangle of red roses that filled the space. They had not even attempted to check the church.

“Sam? What--aren’t we doing a perimeter check?” He could not sense any demonic or angelic activity. Still, that did not rule out other supernatural beings.

Sam stopped near one of rose bushes, with his back to Cas. “Cas, can I talk to you?” He did not turn around.

“Of course, Sam,” Cas said, and felt guilt prickle under his skin at the distance he had been keeping from him. Of course, he had meant to keep his distance from both of the Winchesters, but such a thing seemed impossible. They were like immovable objects, stronger than gravity or time (for gravity and time were both notoriously fluid, Cas knew) which he could not ever truly escape, and was not sure he wanted to escape.

And yet he also remembered the wrenching, airless feeling that gripped him when he realized that Sam had used him to complete the spell. An echo of that feeling clutched at him now.

Sam had known that Cas would rather die than fail his friend, and that made it all the worse.

Ah, but that was just it: Sam _was_ his friend, and Cas loved him. That was inescapable, too.

It seemed to Cas that no matter what he did, or where he went, or what he altered, he would always end up here.

“Cas, look,” Sam said, finally turning to face him, with his hands in his pockets. He gave a short, sharp exhale, as though coming up for air after a plunge into icy water. “I just want you to know something.” He shook his head. “Well, a couple of things actually. Just...” There he stopped. Somewhere nearby, a cardinal gave out a harsh little _chip_ and flitted overhead in a flash of scarlet wings.

“Usually Dean’s the one that struggles with trying to discuss emotions,” Cas observed after a few moments.

“Yeah, well, don’t expect me to attempt Dean’s version of a heart-to-heart.”

“Ah,” Cas said. “He told you about that.”

“What? Fuck no.” Sam rolled his eyes. “Dean doesn’t _tell_ people these things, Cas. You of all people should know that. But I’m not stupid. He snuck out to your room the minute he thought I was asleep and didn’t come back until morning. He hasn’t pulled shit like that since he was seventeen. Plus, I saw your moment in the parking lot, _and_ I saw his face for the entire duration of the drive here. Which happened in complete silence, by the way.”

“That sounds...awkward. Apologies.”  The conversation trailed off again, and Cas could not stand the oppressive bubble that seemed to separate him and Sam. It distorted and dimmed the air around them. _Now we see things as in a mirror, dimly,_ Cas thought, and he longed to see his friend face to face.

Sam shrugged. “Yeah, well, Dean’s an awkward kind of guy sometimes. But that isn’t actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, raking  his hair away from his face. “I just...wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“With Dean?”

“No, in general. With everything that went down.”

“You.... you  mean with the spell to remove the Mark.”

Sam grimaced. “Yeah.”

Cas looked away, back to where the distant sounds of metal-on-metal and muffled swearing meant that Dean was still elbow-deep in the engine block of the Impala, probably sweating profusely at the conversation he thought Sam and Cas were having. “In the interest of honesty, I have to say that no, I’m not...okay. For as many times as I’ve been instrumental in saving this world, I’ve been instrumental in destroying it, too. And...Sam, I led an innocent man to his death. I stood by silently and let Rowena sacrifice him to complete the spell. That will never come off. But I thought, well--I did the arithmetic. I knew that, when Dean eventually succumbed to the Mark, he would slaughter thousands. Hundreds of thousands. I thought that one innocent life was worth the lives of countless others, and so I accepted his blood on my hands. What’s a little more blood to a creature like me, after all?”  He looked back at Sam. “And also...I didn’t want to fail you. I’ve already failed you--both of you--so many times before, and I couldn’t bear to do it again. But in the end I was wrong. I had the calculations wrong, and thousands have died anyway. I cause destruction no matter what I do.”

Sam shook his head, miserably. “No, listen. You said it yourself, you didn’t know what the true outcome would be.  I mean, you have every right to be pissed about how things happened, and I’m sorry about it. I am.” Sam took a breath, as though to steady himself. It didn’t seem like he succeeded. “But, you know...I wasn’t thinking clearly. I thought maybe Death was bluffing because I stood him up or...or maybe it wasn’t really as bad as he said it was. Or...I don’t even know what I was in my head, to be honest. All I could think was that I had to fix Dean. That’s the only thing I could think. It kept repeating and repeating in my head until I couldn’t hear anything else. It’s like it ate every other thought in my brain and I couldn’t...I couldn’t stop. Not when we were so close! Not when I was finally on the brink of saving him. And I knew you’d come through. I knew that, even if I died, you’d come through, and so I’d still win. We’d still win. I just...I didn’t really understand the cost of my victory. And if I had to do it again, well, I don’t know if I would. I’d stop the spell, I’d find some other way to do it. But we were so close, Cas...I just wanted it to be over. It was almost over and I just wanted....”

Cas could not stand the look of stark despair that overtook Sam’s face then, and so he pulled him into a hug before he could finish his thought. It was very different than hugging Dean, but, he found, just as necessary. Cas felt something heavy drop away, like a rusted hook that had been sunk into him suddenly letting him go. They stood that way for several long moments, before Cas said into Sam’s shoulder: “It’s okay, Sam, we’ve all made bad choices with good intentions. Me most of all. I believe there’s a saying about it, in fact.” Sam laughed at that, a genuine laugh, though it was cut with remnants of tears. Cas found himself smiling. “We’ll fix it. You’ll see.”

Sam pulled away and nodded, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes. “Yeah, we will. The three of us. Just like old times.” He gave Cas a resounding pat on the back.

Sam turned back toward the church, and so he did not see the way that Cas looked down at his feet, or the way his throat worked with difficulty as he said: “Yes, the three of us.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _There are a few things that I feel the show hasn't addressed well, or at all, so I've attempted to do so here._   
>  _1.) Vessel Consent: Hannah choosing to let Caroline go was such a wonderful thing, but I don't see how she could continue to let angels (including herself) take vessels knowing what she knows now. This is my way of making it less problematic._   
>  _2.) I can't imagine post-season-seven Castiel being so coldly brutal about letting an innocent person be sacrificed to complete a spell, no matter how necessary he felt it was. To me, that was a major component of his character arc; they even mentioned it when he was attempting to extract Gadreel's grace from Sam. And yet he let it happen for this spell. Why? Again, this is my attempt at making what happened make a little more sense. I hope I've succeeded._   
>  _3.) What Sam did was kind of shitty, really, but I wanted to get into his headspace and see if i could make sense of it. Plus, I love Cas and Sam's friendship, and I had to give them a chance to be friends again._   
>  _Hope you enjoyed!_


	11. The Magician

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Sam finally learn what Cas had planned all along.

“You two kiss and make up?” Elle asked, from her perch on the hood of the Continental. She was eating some sort of yellow oblong confectionery that Castiel vaguely recognized, and she held one out to him as he approached.

“We hugged and made up. There was no kissing involved,” Castiel said, examining the cake critically. “What is it?”  
  
“Manna!” Elle exclaimed. “Manna from Heaven.”

“This in no way resembles what the Israelites ate during their exile in the desert.”

“Wow, you _are_ literal,” she said with a laugh. “Sorry. It’s a Twinkie.”

“Ah, right. Yes. I remember these from when I was a sales associate at the Gas ‘n’ Sip.”

 “You worked at a _gas station_?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Everything is, with you boys. Anyway, I scored six boxes of them from that Gas ‘n’ Sip we knocked over the other day. Now it really feels like an apocalypse.” When he made no move to take it, she shrugged and ate it herself. Then she hopped down lightly and smiled up at him, all straight white teeth and long eyelashes. Cas found it hard not to stare at her; in that way, she reminded him of Dean, except that what he felt when he stared at her was different than what he felt when he stared at Dean (exactly what it was he felt, he could not say, he only knew that he felt it). She also did not seem to mind that he did it. Indeed, he realized he’d been watching her for what was probably an inappropriate amount of time, and she had watched him right back with a patient, amused expression on her face.

“Sorry,” Castiel mumbled, stepping back and looking down, feeling as though he had done something wrong. “I apologize. I know I shouldn’t do that.”  
  
“What? Look at me? I don’t mind. I figured it was just some angel thing.” She smiled at him again, then slung her bag of spell ingredients over her shoulder and walked toward the church. Metal D-rings and glass jars clinked as she moved. “Angels, man.” Cas heard her say, to no one in particular. “Gotta love ‘em.”

The four of them set to work breaking the wards and cutting bolts. It was long, slow, sweaty work, and it took hours. The deep honeyed sunshine of the late afternoon had given way to the blue dusk. Eventually the doors opened with a groan, the hinges shrieking from decades of disuse. The inside of the church was hushed and dustless as a newly-closed tomb. There was no sign of struggle or violence inside of it, and yet Castiel found the profound quiet hard to take. The sudden influx of light and noise and life seemed to startle the very air. As he stood in the doorway, his own shadow stretched long and almost monstrous in the fading sunlight, splintered by the many-faced glint of the rose window.

“Well, this is cosy,” Dean said, coming up beside him on the narthex. Dean stared straight ahead, at the plain wooden cross above the lion-footed altar. He stood close enough to brush shoulders, but didn’t quite close the gap. “Kind of ironic for an occult secret society to meet in a church, don’t you think?”

Cas made a noncommittal noise and interlaced their fingers for a moment as they stepped into the nave. He didn’t bother looking at Dean’s face; he knew what he’d see there. “Not really, no. It’s just a different brand of occultism.” The slow barrage of Cas’ footsteps rang through the space.

“Guess you can’t get struck down for saying shit like that anymore,” Dean observed from behind him, with only the faintest hint of unsteadiness to his voice.

“There are far more compelling reasons for me to be struck down. A simple observation of fact hardly warrants a raised eyebrow.” He stopped between the rows of darkly polished pews with their threadbare cushions and crumbling hymnaries. “There’s nothing in this part of the building that suggests anything other than Episcopalianism, though. They must have a basement or hidden room.”

“It’s _got_ to be here somewhere. I saw an Aquarian Star out back,” Sam said, running his hands along the worm-eaten paneling behind the altar, clearly searching for hidden doors. “Should we go look for it? See if we can find anything useful for the spells?”

“No,” Elle said, stepping into the church at last. Her silhouette was stark and absolute against the wash of gold-edged light. Her voice seemed overly loud in the overwhelming silence. But then, _everything_ seemed overly loud in here. “We can look later. I think I’ve got everything I need, if my reckoning is right. I think, though...I think I should only do the tracking spell here.”

“What, why?” Cas asked, turning to her. She had not moved from the doorway and he could not see her face, but he noticed the line of tension that ran through her shoulders beneath the thin fabric of her t-shirt.

“Because--and again, this depends on me getting the calculations right--we need to be as close to Rowena and the Book as possible to get the full effect of releasing all those souls at once. You called it the nuclear option, Cas, and you were more right than you realized. The force of all the souls leaving the Veil should restore the angels to their full strength. The archangels, too. I think it should be enough to drive the Darkness back, and if Hannah’s got everything all set upstairs, it should be instantaneous lockdown.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Dean said. “Except I’m hearing a ‘but’ in there, somewhere…”

“ _But_ we have no idea where she is right now.  We’re gonna rain fire from the sky, which I am totally down for, by the way, but we need to make sure we aim it at the right place. If we do it here, who can say if the uh...inevitable blast wave will reach far enough. We need to take ground zero to her.”

 “Okay, so, we find her and we go all _Apocalypse Now_ on her,” Dean said with a shrug. “I’m sure Sam’s got whatever song they play from the helicopter on his iPod somewhere. I’m game.”

“No, I said nuclear, not napalm,” Elle said quietly.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked. He was looking at her closely, but his eyes kept skating towards Dean and Cas.  
  


“I mean that anyone standing in the vicinity is probably going to be burnt to a shadow.” She looked grave, her bright-dark eyes slightly clouded and her mouth grim. “Anyone human, I mean. I have no idea what it’ll do to an angel.”

“Then I’ll cast it,” Cas said.

“I...I don’t think that will work.”

“Why not?” And suddenly Cas wanted to scream and scream and scream, loud enough to shake this church to its foundations, loud enough to shatter eardrums and break glass and explode every remaining light in civilization, because he knew what was coming. He stood very still.

“It needs human blood,” Elle said, sounding apologetic. “Human blood spilled at the moment of casting.” She swallowed thickly. “I um, went back and checked and checked again, to see if maybe we could use slightly older blood. I figure five miles away is a safe distance; it would only take a few minutes to get the blood and drive it to the place of casting and then clear out again. I thought we could maybe rig something up, some kind of time release. But it just...doesn’t work. It has to be done _the moment of._ It’s the last ingredient.”

Sam and Dean looked at each other from across the breadth of the church, and in his head, Castiel swore in every language that had ever existed.

“So, I’ll cast it,” Elle said, with a matter-of-fact nod of the head.

“Fuck no,” Dean said, the same instant that Cas said “Absolutely not” and Sam gave a noise of alarm. She blinked at the onslaught.

“Guys, it’s...it’s _my_ spell. I’ll cast it. I’m willing to do it.”

“The hell you will,” Dean said, and his voice was a growl. “We got us in this mess, we’ll get us out. No more stupid fucking sacrifices from innocent people. This isn’t up for debate. You are not doing it. I swear, if I have to knock you out and drag you away from the site, I will.”

Elle put up her hands at the venom in his tone. “Alright, alright, we can discuss this later, I guess. But Dean,” she said, and her voice had gone very quiet. “There’s something else. I’ve been thinking. I think I know why the Darkness won’t touch your car. I think I know why it won’t touch you.”

“What do you mean, it won’t touch _you_?” Cas asked, rounding on Dean. “Have you been...out in it?”

“Yeah, he has,” she said. “Sam, too.”

Dean looked to the ceiling, where the dark bones of the rafters angled toward the unseen sky. “How’d you figure that out, Elle? I don't remember saying anything.”

“Your oblique references aren’t as oblique as you’d like to think, Dean. And I don’t sleep as deeply as you seem to think I do. I remember Indiana.” She shook her head. “But that doesn’t matter. I was thinking about what Sam said, about the Mark and how it kept the Darkness locked up, through you. In you. I think...I think it remembers you. I think it sees you as an extension of itself. I think the Darkness doesn’t touch the car, because it sees the car as a part of you. I’d bet good money it doesn’t go after Sam because it sees Sam as a part of you, too.”

Silently, Cas remembered watching the black spiderweb of Darkness adhere to the sleeve of his coat, the skin of his cheek. He remembered the way it climbed towards his eye; he remembered its soft almost-voice in his ear, the soothing purr of it before it screamed as he’d made a conflagration of his flesh, burning it all away. Some things were worse, he decided, than simply dying.

“Are you sure it needs human blood?” Cas asked, then, and the tone of his voice made Dean snap his head around to look at him.“Are you sure I can’t do it?”

“I don’t think so. Human only. I don’t think the blood of an angel will work.”  
  
“That won’t be an issue.”

“What? Why won’t it be an issue?” Elle looked at him. The thread of a frown drew her eyebrows together.

“I can make my blood human. Or close enough. I can remove my grace and then provide the blood for the spell.”

Dean grabbed him by the collar of his coat before the last word was even out. Cas stumbled backwards little. “So help me, you will not. Don’t even think about it, Castiel.”

“Seriously, Cas, no,” Sam said, sounding about as horrified as Dean looked. “You’re not cutting your grace out and doing a suicide mission here.”

“Dean, Sam…”  
  
“No.” was the two-voiced answer that rang through the air like a shot.

“It doesn’t matter,” Cas said. Dean still had him by the collar, and Cas slumped in his grip like a hanged man.  “It doesn’t matter. Look. As soon as we’ve won, after Lucifer and Michael leave, I’ll be gone anyway. Let me do this.”

Dean blinked rapidly. “You’re heading back home for good,” he said, then paused, frowning a little. Dean liked to project an air of affable boorishness, a veneer of tough-guy indifference, but it was an act, a defence against a world where he had never been allowed to succeed in the ways he was meant to. Many a foe had fallen beneath his blade, his bullet, his boot, an instant after realizing their mistake. “Wait. You...you won’t be able to get back upstairs if you’re not powered up. You don’t actually know what’ll happen if you die when you don’t have grace in you. You said don’t remember what happened after that Reaper killed you. You’re not even sure you have a _soul_ when you’re not an angel. What do you mean you’ll be _gone_?”

Cas bit his lip, stopping the lie that formed before it could spill out. He wished he were still in full possession of his powers, so that he might bend the last five minutes to his will, go back and abort this entire conversation before it began. But there were thousands of things in this universe he could not have, and a second chance at this was one of them. So he opted for honesty, and hated it.

“I mean, I made a deal with Lucifer and Michael in order to gain their obedience and their allegiance. Remember?”  
  
“Yeah, I know. You said you gave them their freedom as long as they got the fuck out of this dimension.” Dean finally unclenched his fist from the back of Cas’ coat, but left his hand there, between the shoulder blades. It was cold. Cas fought the urge to take it in his own to warm it.

“Yes, those were the main terms of the deal.”  
  
“But there were others? Please, don’t tell me you…” Dean closed his eyes, tightly, as though fending off a hallucination. “What were the other terms?”

“I demanded a token of good faith from them, to show Hannah that they were serious about the deal, that they would agree to be bound to me. That token was the soul of your brother, Adam. I raised him from the Cage and put him in Heaven.”

“Shit,” Sam said, sounding awed. “You’ve saved all three of us now.”

Cas smiled, in spite of himself. “Yes, I do seem to have a propensity for pulling John Winchester’s boys out of the fire, as it were.” He cleared his throat. “I left them the vessel. They have had to share, which has, frankly, been….well, not funny, but it does create a certain malicious amusement on my part.”

“Cas, get to the point.” Dean’s face and voice were dangerously neutral.

“In return, they demanded a good faith token of their own. Proof that I was serious. They refused to agree to any of my terms without it, even though refusal meant they’d never be free from the Cage. They craved revenge even more than they craved freedom.”

“What did they ask?” Elle’s voice seemed brittle and far away.

“Your souls,” Cas said, gesturing between Sam and Dean.

“ _What?_ ” Sam asked. He seemed to stagger a little and sat down in the nearest pew. “Their price for fighting the Darkness was...us in the Cage?”  
  
“I refused, of course!” Cas said, imploringly. “You can’t think I would have agreed to that. Not ever.”

“But they agreed. What did you give them to make them agree?” Dean asked. But Cas found he couldn’t speak, because Dean appeared to be shattering in front of his eyes. “Cas. What”--the ‘t’ was sharper than any blade; it drew blood--“did you give them?” Dean grabbed him again, nearly by the throat, and looked him in the eye. “Answer me, damn it.” Cas swallowed against the pressure, and Dean’s hand fell away.

“Just...myself. Your souls in Heaven, for me in Hell. Even if I cut out my grace, it should survive the blast, and so I won’t negate the terms of the deal.”

Dean suddenly was no longer in front of him, but was walking away as though he had a Hellhound baying at his heels. “Dean, I never thought I’d see you again.” Cas called to his rapidly retreating back. Then louder: “I was going to end my own life, anyway, Dean. This way at least it wouldn’t be a useless symbolic gesture!”

But he was gone, swallowed up by the trees.

 “Should...should I go after him?” Cas asked, staring at the place where Dean had been only a moment before. It felt like an incalculable loss, as though part of him had been ripped away, never to return. For a moment he thought he might still be in Purgatory. Maybe he had never left. Perhaps his mind had snapped, watching Dean disappear through that portal. Maybe he had hallucinated the last three years. Maybe he was already dead. Maybe...

“No, just give him some time, Cas,” Elle said, breaking into his thoughts. She squeezed his hand sympathetically. “That’s a hard pill for anyone to swallow. From what I know about Dean, it might be impossible.”

“I just--I had already said goodbye. I hadn’t planned on...I planned on ending my life, once this battle was done, and Dean never would have known. So what difference did it make to anyone but me if I ended up in the Cage?” Cas turned to look at Elle feeling an inexplicable need for her reassurance, for her serious dark eyes and calm face; he felt compelled to explain himself to her--of all people, someone he barely knew--and have her tell him she understood.

She put her hand, smaller than Dean’s or Sam’s, but strong in its own way, on his shoulder, and was silent. Her hand was very warm.

Sam had not moved from the far side of the church. But Cas could see the blank-eyed look on Sam’s face as he stared in his direction. “Cas,” he said at last, “Why didn’t you say anything before now? Why...you were going to kill yourself? Just. Just _why_?”

“Sam, I didn’t think it mattered. As far as Dean would know, as far as anyone would know, I would be in Heaven. You could get on with your lives, working as a team, living the life you’d always lived, without me and my family’s...issues...raining strife down on your heads. I knew that as long as I lived, I wouldn’t be able to stay away, not completely. But with me gone, what reason would they have to trouble you any more?” He sank down into one of the pews, looking down at his hands, as though they would hold any answers for him.

“And also...also, I knew that, as long as I was alive, someone would always want to use me as a piece in their game, whatever it might be. I am so _tired_ of being moved, Sam, of being told to exercise Free Will but never having the ability. So I decided to just take myself off the board. That was to be _my_ statement of Free Will, the only one I felt I could truly make. It was better for everyone. ”

Sam slowly made his way over to where Cas was seated, immobile and downcast, a statue of grief fit for a graveyard. He sat down next to him, sending a plume of dust motes up through the first slanting rays of moonlight. Neither spoke for a few moments. Sadness, Cas noticed, made Sam still and quiet, where it made Dean loud and sharp. For a long time, neither of them spoke, and the church grew steadily darker.

“Look, I know how you feel, wanting to...wanting to take yourself off the board. Dean and I both know what it’s like to be a pawn in someone else’s game. I mean, you remember the Apocalypse as well as we do. But you know, there are other ways to refuse to play, and there are other ways to play on your own terms.”  Sam didn’t look at him. “And, Cas, you have to know that they aren’t your troubles, they’re our troubles. We share them. That’s what family does.”

“I know that _now_ , Sam.” The cruel irony of it bit into him.  It smiled through bloody teeth at him as it cracked ribs and rended veins and ventricles.

_Wasn’t it always the way, getting what you wanted when you no longer had use for it?_

“And seriously, did you really think pretending to be in Heaven would work?” There was a distinct, if incongruous note of amusement in Sam’s voice.  
  
“Why wouldn’t it work?” Cas asked. He finally looked up at Sam.

“Have you _met_ my brother? You might fool him while he’s alive, but he’s died enough times to know how it goes. He’d know where he was when he landed upstairs. Sooner or later, he’d figure it out. And Cas, if Dean thought you were in Heaven, he wouldn’t be able to sit quietly and do nothing. He’d tear the place apart looking for you. He’d burn it to the ground if he had to. Hell, he’s done something similar before, remember?”

“I... I confess, I hadn't considered that possibility,” Cas admitted, feeling the rupture beneath his ribs open further. He wondered if he’d start spitting blood. Sam was so certain that Dean would look for him. He thought again of Purgatory, but of meeting rather than parting. Sam had not been in there; he had not seen Dean’s face when he finally tracked Cas down by the banks of the river, he had not heard the urgency and the need in Dean’s voice as he had asked (commanded) him to come home. But Sam spoke with certainty, as though he could still believe absolutely in things which he had not seen. Cas remembered when he had once possessed that skill. _This is your problem_ , he thought.  _You have no faith_.

“I can’t break the deal, Sam,” Cas said, heartsick. “I am as bound to it as Lucifer and Michael are. Breaking a pact with Crowley was nothing to me, but these are archangels. They will bury me and everyone I’ve ever cared about. If I do not keep my word, then I release them from their terms, as well. We'll lose everything. Everything. I understand now that I should have said something sooner. I should have said something before your brother…” He stopped himself, took a breath. “But Sam, what choice did I have? I would not give you up, you or Dean, and I _had_ to gain their compliance. My soul in Hell is a trifle compared to either of those outcomes. I was glad to pay the price.”

 “Christ, you are a Winchester,” Sam said, then winced when he remembered where he was. “Sorry!” he murmured, looking toward the cross, then curtailed the movement with a flinch. “Elle, what are you doing?”

For she was kneeling on the altar, eyes fierce and distant, with a brass bowl at her knees and a crumpled old map of the world in front of her. Cas just caught the scent of burnt spices, the bitter perfume of myrrh and the sharp-sweet bite of holy oil and...something else he could not name. She lit a candle, and the tang of phosphorus reached his nose as she looked up at Cas. The candlelight somehow blurred and sharpened her features, giving her the appearance of a statue blasted by desert winds. Hard and soft, exact and indistinct.

“Tracking spell.” She looked up and to the side, thoughtful, then added another pinch of something. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”

“Wouldn’t a US map be more useful? Last time we saw her she was in North America.”

“That was thirty seven…” She checked her watch. “Almost thirty eight days ago, and she’s powerful enough to move around at will, I’m pretty sure. Anyway, she’s not American. What makes you think she’d stick around here?”

“Okay, that’s a fair point,” Sam conceded. “But isn’t that a bit imprecise?”

“I’ll cast it twice. I’ve got more maps. And I am a creature of precision in all things, Sam. I can track someone to within a five mile radius, if I’m on my game. And I am always on my game.” She looked intently into bowl as she worked, and the finally seemed satisfied. She lifted her head. “I need your blood,” she said to Cas, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.

“My….”

“Your blood,” she repeated. “ We need to find Rowena, and to do that, I need something of hers.”  
  
“I’m not hers.” The thought would have made him vomit, had he had the ability.  
  
“No, you’re not. But you have been touched by her magic. The imprint of it will still be in you---like antibodies after an illness, or fingerprints at the scene of a crime. So _you’re_ not hers, but whatever lingers from that spell sure is.”

“The departed shall remain, and the remains shall be departed?” Sam asked, his eyes widening.

“Well, yeah, I guess,” Elle said, shrugging. “If you want to be flowery about it.”

“What about Metatron’s grace? We’ve got plenty of that,” Sam offered, looking at Cas.

“No,” Cas said. He shook his head. “We know they’re working together, but we have no definitive proof that they’re actually with each other.”

“Bingo,” Elle said. She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “It’s up to you, though. What do you say?”

It was the ending question rather than the earlier order that drove Cas to his feet. He walked towards her down the long, empty aisle. The night was fully upon them, now, and the deepening dark twisted and moved with the flickering of the flame. She watched him intently, with that perpetual quiet, quizzical expression on her face. He surrendered his blade, handle first, and she slid a hand under his forearm, pulling up the sleeves that covered it. He expected her to withdraw it once the skin was exposed, but she kept her hand there, a steadying, warm presence as she quietly spoke the words of the spell. He was so distracted by this that he almost did not register the sting of it when the tip of the knife sank in, spilling light and blood. It flowed into a small bottle, and she poured half the contents onto the waiting spell ingredients. The contents of the conjuring bowl sparked and smoked as she lit it and poured it out onto the map.

The paper charred and flaked as the face of the world turned black, eaten away until nothing remained but a small unburnt square.

“Thank you,” she said, quietly, and pulled his sleeve back down over the now-unblemished skin. She slid down from the altar and regarded the remains of the map. Behind him, Cas could feel Sam’s presence as he, too, came up and peered over Cas’ shoulder. “Well, what do you know?” Elle asked, with a low whistle.

“Huh,” Sam said. “Figures.”

“Yeah.”

“She’s gone home,” Cas said, looking at the small green square amongst a swath of pale blue. 

“Yep,” Elle said, preparing the second spell--much more rapidly this time, with a graceful fluidity that she did not tend to show in her day-to-day movements. “Now we just got to find out where, exactly, that is.” Another flash of light, another waft of burning paper, flaking away in black butterflies. “Bingo.” 

“But how in god’s name are we even going to get there?” Sam asked, then appended a hasty: “Sorry!” and a wave toward the cross above them.

Elle shrugged. “Well, she’s probably got Hell on her side, but we’ve got Heaven on ours. I think we’ll manage,” she said, carefully wiping out the inside of the bowl (red enamel, with a chip of lapis lazuli in the center, like a watchful blue eye in an O-gape of newly-shed blood). She folded up the cloth and gently placed the remaining herbs and ingredients back in their vials. She was diligent and methodical in her work. Satisfied, she zipped up her duffle and brushed her hands on her jeans. 

“Okay, let’s go!” She said brightly, but the effect of it was dampened by the expansive yawn and slight stagger that followed.

“Woah, maybe we should hold off the cavalry charge until you’ve gotten a few hours sleep,” Sam said, steadying her with a hand on the back.

“Ugh, fine,” Elle said, wincing in frustration. She checked her watch. “It’s nearly eleven now. We find Dean, we sleep for a few hours, we go. Fair? Cas, let’s go find your man, call Hannah, and get this moveable feast on the road.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Cas makes terrible deals because he puts himself in a position where he thinks he has no option except the worst option._   
>  _Sorry, I can't be more eloquent at the moment. I am excruciatingly tired, and this chapter really took it out of me, for some reason._


	12. The Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mutual first aid and a Communion.

Dean’s knuckles throbbed. They oozed blood, the quick red turned to slow black in the failing light. Running away to the woods had been a mistake. Running away in general was a mistake, he had come to realize, and one he was particularly prone to making. This time, though, it had been an actual physical mistake, because he had not paid attention to his surroundings and had stumbled right into the path of a werewolf.

_Oh yeah, unusually high concentration of monsters, right. That’s a thing that’s happening. Idiot._

He had dispatched it with the silver knife that he kept in the hidden pocket of his jacket, but it had been a near thing, earning him a bone-jarring tackle for his trouble, and a raw laceration across his chest, which stung in the night air. Still, he could not shake the sense that it had been operating at less than full capacity. It had gotten the jump on Dean, sure, but once Dean had collected his wits and sprung into action, it was all over. When he pushed the corpse off of him, it had weighed surprisingly little, considering the size of the man that remained once the monster was gone. Out of curiosity, Dean had pushed back the dead man’s shirt and was shocked to see the stark jut of his ribs protruding beneath the cooling skin. It looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal in weeks.

Finally the church came into view, and Dean’s shoulders sagged with relief. A twig snapped somewhere behind him, and he whirled around, brandishing the knife.

“Dean, it’s just me.” Cas emerged from the dark with his hands up, but whether in surrender or supplication was impossible to tell.

 _He is made of shadow and starlight_ , Dean thought, as the sight of Castiel startled poetry out of his bones. Seeing him, Dean felt constellations shift, and part of his soul called out a greeting--would always, forever, be calling out, he understood, so hopelessly late in the day; but Dean was a creature of earth and dust, afraid of being looked on, afraid of being known. He stumbled back a step.

“It’s just me,” he heard Cas repeat: a plea, or a prayer: _You know me, you know me_ , it said, when the knife did not lower.

“Cas,” Dean sighed. He dropped his arm and stowed the blade.

Cas did not move any closer, but it was obvious he could see the damage Dean had sustained. “What happened? We’ve been looking for you for nearly an hour. I...thought I heard you praying to me for a moment, but then I lost you.”

“Werewolf,” Dean said, not trusting his own voice.

“Just the one?”

“Yeah. No sign of a pack that I could see. He was weak, too. He, uh--I wasn’t paying close enough attention, so he got the drop on me, but he didn’t have much fight in him. Looked like he was wasting away.”

“Hmm,” Cas said, finally moving out from under the cover of the trees. “You need to be more careful.” It was impossible to miss the note of reproach in his voice, and Dean bristled.

“Yeah, well, _you_ need to learn not to make fucking scorched-earth deals with the Devil himself.”

Cas slowed to a halt a few feet away, as though he were a wind-up toy running down. “Dean, I…”

Dean gritted his teeth. “Forget it, I am not getting into this with you right now. If I even think about it I’m going to just…Just forget it, okay?”  He began to trudge back to the church, finding new aches and pains with every step he took. Cas seemed to notice and fell in a few uncertain paces behind.

“Let me heal you.”

“No.”

“Please.” That one syllable took on a note of abject apology that Dean found infuriating.

“Damn it, no.”

“Why not? You’re in pain.”

“Because,” Dean began, but found he didn’t actually have a good reason. _Sepsis is a very real concern_ , he remembered. But still. “Because I’ve got to get used to healing on my own, don’t I? Might as well start now.”

It was an unnecessarily cruel remark, for both of them, and Cas flinched a little at the barb. “Very well. If you change your mind, let me know.” He moved past Dean, and the air seemed to grow thick, to swirl and eddy and crackle in his wake.

“Ah, damn it,” Dean muttered, quickening his pace and wincing from the effort. He suspected a cracked rib, and looked down at the bloody hand covering the cut on his chest. By the time he looked back up, Cas had already disappeared inside the doors. “Damn it,” he repeated. He’d forgotten just how fast Cas could move when he was motivated to do so.

“Dean!” Sam’s voice rang out from a few yards away, and the trace of a flashlight found Dean’s shoes, then his jeans, then face. Sam crossed the ground between them in a few long strides, then frowned as he saw the state of Dean’s clothes. “Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

“I got jumped by a werewolf, but I took him down. My own damn fault for not paying attention. Don’t worry, I didn’t get bit.”

“You look like you took a pretty bad hit there. Do you want me to go find Cas?”

“He’s in the church,” Dean said, sullenly. “I’ll--I’ll have him do it later.”

“He didn’t heal you?”  
  
“He offered.”  
  
“And you said no because…”  
  
“Shut up, Sam.”  
  
Sam almost contained his sigh of annoyance. “Look, Dean, I get it. You’re pissed at him, and you’re scared, and you’re freaking out because you’re afraid you’re going to lose him for good this time.”  
  
“Shut _up_ , Sam.”

“But you know what?” Sam continued on, as though he hadn’t heard. “We’re a day away from a showdown with Rowena. In fucking Scotland, by the way.  We’re going to have Heaven, Hell and the Darkness on all sides and we need to be on our game, okay? If there’s a chance that any of us are going to survive this, let alone win, we’ve got to be firing on all cylinders. And right now, you’re not.”

Dean said nothing, and Sam braced himself for a hit. It was a subtle movement, barely visible in the moonlight, but Dean had seen it enough times to know what it was. Every inch of him rang with the need to throw a punch, to roar and foam and batter, like a storm at sea; but he couldn’t, he’d sworn he wouldn’t, not after everything. He could control himself. He could. He let the storm rage through him and out.

“And Dean,” Sam said after a few moments, more quietly, sensing that the danger had passed, but not quite letting his guard down. “Listen. He’s gotten three people out of that thing. Mostly. Three. I know we don’t have the Horsemen’s rings anymore, but he picked those locks somehow. Just...don’t write him off before anything’s even happened.”

“That was breaking in, Sam,” Dean said. He felt dangerously close to crumbling away to a pile of ash and cinder, as though the heart had burned right out of him. “Nothing breaks _out_. Not even a pair of fucking archangels could break _out_.” He hid his face in his hand, not even minding the blood and grime that filled the lines of his palm.

“I know. I know,” Sam said, sounding sad and tired all of a sudden. The circles under his eyes, deep as bruises, had been more or less a permanent feature for the last three years, and they seemed especially pronounced now. “I’m not saying that busting him out is a sure thing, or even _likely_. I’m just saying it isn’t impossible. Have a little faith.”

With that, Sam turned away. He called back over his shoulder: “And let him heal you, for god’s sake.”

Dean did not follow him into the church immediately, but sat on the steps, watching small clouds scud across the face of the moon. It had been almost forty days since the Darkness began consuming earth; forty days of starless midnight and slow withering, with the world being hollowed out and eaten away as though by a cancer. _It wants only to spread,_ Hannah had said. It had no goal beyond that. When it had been locked in Cain, or in Dean, its only means of spreading was through violence and bloodshed, and the Darkness used its vessel where it could not use itself.

But now it was free. Detroit was burning. Hell, most of the Steel Belt was probably burning. Dean remembered the occasional fire-flare of violence that made him think of Croats. But mostly he remembered the deadly torpor of most of the refugees he had come across, who had looked at him as though they barely registered his presence, as though they were slowly wasting away, unable to gather the will to even be frightened.

Cas said that the Darkness told you what you wanted to hear until you believed everything it said. It made you believe whatever thoughts would consume you most completely. Dean remembered not the way it had sung to him of the glory of the kill, but of the love he felt for his family: for Sam, for Cas, for Charlie. It had whispered and crooned of how that love was returned, how he knew the truth he would not speak-- _how they loved him, how fiercely and how completely, how differently and yet how wholly_. And then it had started screaming at him. _He would take that love and ruin it, he would see his family burn, the moment they laid a hand on him, they were lost._ His stomach turned, and deep beneath the unblemished skin of his arm he felt a phantom pain blossom for a moment.

The Darkness whispered to people, he knew, but what it whispered to them surely varied by individual. It had to. For some,  that must mean jealousy, anger, fear, but--those feelings would surely spur people on to acts of brutality and rampage. Not _indifference_. Not _apathy_. It was bewildering and frightening in a way he didn’t quite understand.

God, he just wanted to rest. Let someone else handle this. Please, _please_.

 _Brother, I’m done_ his own voice grated, unbidden, at his brain.

 _I’m too tired_ Sam’s said, hopeless and broken and tinged with Hell-sickness.

 _Maybe that’s it_ , Dean thought. Maybe what the Darkness told them was that they were right; there was no point in going on. They were right about everything. Why try? So much easier just to...not. A different kind of apocalypse: not one of blood and fire and brimstone, but of quiet desperation. Everyone just slowly giving up. An apocalypse that asked nothing of you, other than to lay down and let it happen.

 _This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper_ , Dean thought. And yet...

_Have a little faith._

Well, fuck it. He would.

He stood suddenly, then regretted it, as the change in blood pressure made him dizzy. With a groan, he got to his feet in a more deliberate manner and held on to the railing. It was even darker inside the church, once he’d wrenched the doors closed, and it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.  For a minute, he thought the place was empty, that everyone had disappeared somewhere without telling him. But then he saw a dark, dishevelled head, and a familiar pair of broad shoulders (now slightly stooped) just visible above the back of one of the pews in the front. There was a tiny suggestion of movement at his approach--the glint of moonlight on Cas’ hair shifted slightly--but Cas made no other outward sign of acknowledgment. He stared vaguely toward the altar.

Dean slid in next to him, only daring to glance  at Cas out of the corner of his eye. He drew in a  breath to speak, then realized that he smelled the distinct smell of...what was that? Bourbon? He turned to face Cas fully.

“Cas, what the hell? Are you...”  
  
“Drinking? Yes. Elle only had two bottles, though, so a satisfactory level of drunkenness is, unfortunately, out of the question tonight,” Cas said, with a bland sort of disdain, as though he were discussing the weather with someone he did not particularly like. He took a swig. “Go ahead and yell at me.”

Dean made a frustrated noise and grabbed the remaining bottle from his hands. Half of it was gone already. He took a long drink himself, and felt the burn of it trail down his throat into his stomach. It was the first drink he’d had in well over a week, he realized. He could see Cas more clearly now, and he saw the same look of grim stoicism that Cas had worn when he’d appeared at the hotel. As though Dean’s anger at him was a permanent fixture, something to be borne with patience, because it could not be helped; something he felt he deserved, on some level. God, Dean was so tired of seeing that look. He was so _tired_ of being angry--angry in general, of course, but angry at Cas, especially. He sighed.

“No, I was just going to say, Maker’s Mark isn’t the usual choice for Holy Communion, is it?” His tone was easy, and it had the desired effect. Cas turned his head to give Dean a narrow, appraising look.

“Angels don’t celebrate the Eucharist at all,” Cas said slowly, still watching Dean with the careful expression that meant he was trying to gauge the direction of the conversation.

Dean met his eye as he took another long pull from the bottle, then tilted towards him: an offering.

Cas took it and drank, eyelids fluttering closed.  Aside from his brief, graceless, attempt at living human life, he’d never developed an appreciation for food. Intoxicants, though---Cas had developed a taste for them with a quickness and zeal that had made Dean’s skin crawl, remembering what he did of his ill-fated Chitaqua counterpart.

“We’ve never needed to use a conduit for divine grace.” Cas continued, passing the bottle back to Dean and interrupting his thoughts. “I confess, however, that alcohol is an excellent choice for attempting to do just that, if psychoactive drugs aren’t available.” He sighed. “I wish we had some.” Dean suspected it was not wine that he meant. Cas looked down at his hands with a small, private smile, and then tipped his head back to look at the cross in front of them. It was a relaxed, leisurely, terribly _human_ movement that exposed the line of his throat and made Dean’s mouth go dry. Belatedly, he realized he was peeling the label away at the edges in a habitual, nervous motion. He stilled himself and took another drink.

“Um,” Dean began, and shifted closer. They were almost touching now.  Dean could feel the heat radiating off of Cas’ body and he knew it wasn’t just the inflaming presence of alcohol in his system. _Heavenly fire_ is how he’d described himself back in that hotel room--it seemed so long ago now, it might as well have been another lifetime--and Dean wondered through the comfortable haze if that’s why Cas always seemed to burn so hot. He thought of the way Cas had kissed him, and the bloom of warmth that seemed to linger after each one. At the time, he thought he’d been imagining it, but now, he realized, he probably hadn’t been.

“Yes?” Cas asked, with a hint of concern in his voice, when Dean did not continue his thought.

“You’re very hot,” Dean said, dazedly. That wasn’t what he’d meant to say.  
  
“Thank you. Likewise.” Cas drained the last of the bourbon and looked sadly down at the empty bottle, not noticing at all the furious blush he’d just caused to creep across Dean’s face. _Of all the times for Cas to choose the metaphorical meaning over the literal one…_

But he was still speaking: “To be honest with you, all human bodies look pretty much the same, from a celestial perspective. _Abstractly_ we can tell the difference between male and female, of course---that’s largely to do with issues of procreation. But in practice? It’s...well, I’ve never fully understood why humans put so much weight to a distinction that barely exists. And other distinctions are even more baffling.” He shrugged and looked at Dean as though he might have some secret knowledge on the subject that he’d never shared. But all Dean could do was blink and wonder where this conversation was going. “Even _in_ one of these things, it’s all...a mystery,” Cas said, gesturing vaguely towards himself.

( _Not himself_ , Dean thought, _I haven’t actually seen his real self_ , and the thought made him sad, somehow.)

“But,” he went on hastily, as if he might have insulted Dean without meaning to, “I did gain a much more thorough understanding of the human body and its aesthetics when I was...well, you know. And, looking back on all of the human beings I have ever seen, you are superlative, in my opinion.”

“Thank…you.” Dean said, feeling drunker than he should have been. He cleared his throat, too loudly. “Where is everyone?”  
  
“Downstairs. They found the secret room Sam was looking for. They were supposed to go to sleep but I suspect they’re rifling through boxes, instead.”

Dean laughed a little at that. Cas turned to him, then, with a warm look that made Dean's blood-starved heart beat harder. Suddenly, he was reminded that Cas could see him as clearly as though the room were in full sun.

“Dean, please, let me heal you. I know you’re angry with me, and I am sorry, but please…”

“Alright,” Dean said, interrupting the apology before it could start. He grabbed Cas’ hand and placed it on the side of his own face. “You were right. I was just being stupid.” He saw Cas’ eyes dart to where their hands joined; then he saw them flicker blue-white for an instant, like distant lightning, as his whole body momentarily erupted with the cold fire of grace. It felt not unlike hurtling towards a star.

When Dean looked down again, his chest was healed and free from blood, and he moved easily within his newly-knitted flesh. He frowned, straightening the leg which had once laid him up for six weeks when it was broken. “Did you heal my leg? That wasn’t from the werewolf.”

“Yes,” Cas said, lowering his hand with some reluctance. “You were developing arthritis in it from an old break. I thought...sorry, I should have asked.”

“Don’t apologize,” Dean said, flexing his foot. “I appreciate it. It’s been bothering me a lot lately.”

Cas nodded with relief. His hands were now folded quietly in his lap, and Dean could tell that the momentary buzz of the alcohol was beginning to wear off. He turned towards Cas slightly, so that their knees touched, and he felt Cas’ look like a physical sensation. “I thought so,” Cas said. “Lingering injuries are worse in some ways to new ones, aren’t they? They’re just--exhausting, I find. I hated to think of you dealing with something like that when you don’t need to.”

“What do you mean?” Dean asked, searching his memory for any sign of old wounds on Cas’ body and not finding anything. “What injury do you have?”

“Oh. It’s not important,” Cas said. He looked uncomfortable.

“Bullshit,” Dean cut in. Then, something pinged in his mind, sharp and terrible. He had seen proof of wounds on Cas, just not on _this_ body.  “Your wings. You told me that they were...that they were, um…”  
  
“Mutilated, yes.” Cas turned his face away slightly, as though he were embarrassed. Or, perhaps, ashamed. “The flight pair, particularly, though the other two pairs have sustained heavy damage. Though they’re hardly worse than most of the Host’s at the moment. If what Elle says is true, then bypassing Metatron’s spell should restore the whole Host’s to their rightful state. I suppose that’s one thing I can at least feel good about.”

“What about yours?” Dean challenged. “It will work for you, too, right?” He ignored the comment about the “other two pairs”, because _What the hell do you even say to that, really?_ It struck him that his knowledge of angel physiology was virtually non-existent, and he did not know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.   
  
“I can’t see how that matters,” Cas was saying, sounding genuinely bewildered.

“Of course it _matters_ , you dick.” Dean gripped the bottle so tightly that his knuckles were white, and he made himself set it down carefully, so that he wouldn’t throw it.

“I have no idea if a change in Heaven’s power will affect me at all, as I’m conscripted elsewhere now. I suspect not. I have accepted that I’ll probably never get them back, not fully.” Even as he said it, though, Dean could see the way he swallowed hard, the way his jaw worked, and he knew a look of fear when he saw one. “If I had more power, I could probably heal them myself, or at least stop them from being...uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable,” Dean repeated flatly. “So what you’re _actually_ saying is that they’re causing you non-stop agony.”

Cas’ voice was barely above a whisper. “I just try not to focus on it. I succeed, for the most part.” He took a deep breath. “But I’m not special in this regard. All angels suffer the same way--or nearly the same. My recent trips to Hell have exacerbated the damage. That’s all.” He shrugged, studied nonchalance that did nothing to convince Dean.

“Cas...”

“In life, we acquire damage and we inflict it. We must do what we can to limit these things, and bear what we cannot fix.”

“But you _could_ fix it,” Dean said, more sharply than he intended. Then, more gently: “You said if you had more power you could fix it.”

“Well, yes, but...” Cas trailed off, as though he were weighing his words carefully, measuring them out before letting each one fall. “That kind of power isn’t easily accessible.”

“What kind of power would it take?”  
  
“The kind from a human soul. That’s why releasing them from the Veil is so vital to our success.”  
  
“You need to, what, _eat_ someone’s soul to power up right now? Like with Purgatory?”  
  
Cas winced, as though he’d been slapped. But he spoke calmly in spite of the sting. “No, nothing so drastic as that.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Dean. I have tolerated it for this long, and I’ll continue to do so. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” He made to stand, but Dean grabbed him and held him in place.

“Wait. Wait,” Dean said, as the thought slowly took hold of him. “Bobby once told me that you powered up by just touching his soul. Back when you sent us to track down Samuel Colt. He said you were injured and you needed a boost to be able to get us back.”

“That’s true,” Cas said, looking desperately like he wanted to be somewhere else. “But Dean, it isn’t a case of just _touching_ a soul. It’s an incredibly dangerous tactic, while the person is still living in their body. It’s painful and potentially...explosive.”

“I trust you,” Dean said again. He had not let go of Cas’ arm.

“What? What are you suggesting?”  
  
“You know damn well what I’m suggesting. Don’t play dumb.”

“Dean, _no_ , it’s too dangerous. I only did it with Bobby because otherwise I would never have been able to retrieve you. It was too important.”

“This is important.”  
  
“No, Dean, it isn’t.”

“It is to me,” Dean said, and a mixture of despair and affection tangled in his voice, making his words sound unnatural to his ears. “Let me do this for you.”

“Dean...”  
  
“This isn’t a debate.” He remembered Sam’s words to him earlier, and he used them on Cas now, going for the kill. “We’ve got a big showdown coming, and everyone needs to be working at full capacity. If the spell won’t restore you, then you won’t be working at even half capacity.” Cas blinked, and Dean knew the words struck home. Cas was a soldier, with a soldier’s practicality, above all things. Where sentiment failed, logic would win. But Dean could not resist sentiment, anyway. “And besides...I can’t stand the thought of you in that much pain, not when there’s something I can do about it. I can handle it. I have a pretty high pain tolerance, you know.”

The silence between them stretched taut, threatened to snap, and Dean momentarily feared that Cas would still get up and stalk away, enduring his ruin without even the aid of a stiff drink. But finally he just nodded, one small dip of the head, and said softly: “Very well.”

Dean felt his heart leap and then constrict sharply, because Cas had not only described the process as painful, he’d also described it as _potentially explosive_. But Cas was looking into his eyes as though they were a lifeline to a drowning man, and he could not risk showing any hesitation, any fear, no matter how keenly he felt it.

“We’ll have to...” Cas began, then reconsidered, and re-started. “Um. The damage is substantial. It will probably be easier if I actually...” But he trailed to a halt again.

“If you actually _what_ , Cas?” Dean asked at last, just barely keeping the note of panic away.

“If I actually, um, try pulling my wings into this dimension while we’re connected. It would mean that the power surge doesn’t have to travel as far, and I wouldn’t have to hold on for so long. It would be much safer for you, all around.”  
  
“Oh...alright,” Dean said, feeling shaken.

“But, like I say, the damage is substantial. You only saw a little bit of it before, and from far away. It might be...” He stopped, then took a deep breath. “I don’t want to frighten you.”

“You won’t.” _That’s probably not entirely true_ , Dean thought, but did his best to sound confident.

Cas considered him for a long time, and Dean could see the uncertainty there, as though he were weighing up his desire to do this as safely as possible with his fear of Dean’s reaction. Eventually Dean realized that Cas could not bring himself to do it, and tried to offer him a reassuring smile, to tell him it was okay; but then, suddenly, the air split open and the smell of storms and cold mountain air and nameless, ancient things spilled out. Dean felt fire in his blood and ice on his skin.

He had been wrong. He was frightened, as the enormity of it hit him at once, the strangeness, the utterly  _inhuman_ quality that seemed to suffuse Cas then. He still wore the outward appearance of an ordinary man--handsome, certainly, but ordinary--but the air around him seemed to gutter and shift and glow like a thread of spacetime ripping to shreds around him. There was a suggestion of something vast and roaring, of terrible teeth and claws and howling winds. There seemed to be stars above Dean, or perhaps below him; for a moment there seemed to be no sense of direction, no gravity, no air. The soles of Dean’s feet tingled and his stomach lurched, as though he were about to fall from a tower the height of the world, and could not stop himself.

But Cas was looking at him, wide-eyed, hesitant, almost shrinking away, and that felt somehow even stranger and more wrong. So Dean straightened his back and reached out to steady Cas’ shoulder, despite every human instinct in him quailing away. “Okay,” Dean said, quietly, stepping into Cas’ space. “Okay. Let me see.”

And then the shimmering air solidified itself to flesh, and Dean’s breath left him in a rush.

He had known, of course, that Cas’ wings were damaged. He’d seen it first hand, in that brief second before Cas had flown away and he’d witnessed the snarl of ravaged feathers. But this...this was much worse than he’d anticipated. There did not seem to be an unblemished patch of skin anywhere on them, as Dean looked down and across the whole length and breadth of them, where they stretched away, almost brushing the walls on either side. The skin ( _I guess it’s skin?_ ) was the color of gunmetal but was cut with fine silver cracks. Some of them were still leaking light, as though they had been bleeding for a long time and would not stop. In some places, it hung in tatters, exposing what, for lack of a better word, Dean called a bone. He could see the beginnings of some feather-tips beginning to form, each one encased in some kind of hard chrysalis, spike-like and silver, but most of the feathers were just gone, leaving huge, horrible gaps. What feathers there were seemed on the verge of dropping, and had a burnt, crushed look. Only a handful seemed unscathed, and these glittered oddly, darker than even the shadows around them and yet shot through with points of light that slowly spiraled or pulsed or glinted, depending on which way he looked at them. He leaned in closer, not daring to touch, and the sensation of looking down at stars gripped him again.

“ _Wow_ ,” Dean breathed, because he could not think of anything remotely suitable to express what he felt. “They’re...wow. Amazing. And they’re so…..black. I thought they’d be...I don’t know. White.”  
  
Cas looked at him as though he’d said the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “Well, they _can_ be.”

“What?”

“I can make them look like whatever I please.” He furrowed his brow slightly, and suddenly they changed to a white so pure it made Dean momentarily snowblind. The starlit sensation remained, however, as did the damage. Cas changed them back after a moment and the shift from bright to dark left Dean dazzled. “I’ve made them fit inside the building, obviously, but this is just what they look like in their purest form. Or the closest I can get in this dimension without killing you.”

“Oh, okay. I...appreciate that. The not-killing me part.” The sense of vertigo was back. Dean was falling and he would never hit the ground, he would be falling forever...  
  
“Dean, I’ll put them away if you want.” Cas caught him with his voice, steadied him, set him on his feet.  
  
“No!” Dean said, suddenly desperate. “No,” he said again, in a more measured tone. “Let’s do this.”

“You’re certain?”  
  
“Yes,” Dean said, casting another glance at the wings. “Cas, they look--they look really painful, man. I’m not letting you go on another minute like this. So. Come on.” They were already standing close to each other, but Dean moved in closer still, and the words ‘personal space’ flitted through his mind.

“Alright,” Cas said, as though he had finally come to a decision. “I’ll...I’ll see if I can ameliorate some of the discomfort.”

“What? Ho--”

But two things happened simultaneously that killed that thought before it was out. Cas seemed to reach into him, physically _into him_ , right below his heart, and Dean felt himself burning away with a pain that left him unable to even scream. He felt those spectral teeth he had sensed a moment ago snag against something inside of him and pull. At the same moment, Cas closed the space between them, pulling Dean into a kiss. He felt another sensation, a flood of grace moving directly between the two of them, a tether or a kite-string, a long curve of comfort that made him forget how it hurt. Cas kept him there, would not let him burn up, protecting him from the pain of one kind of fire with the pleasure of another.

After what felt like many years, but which was, in fact, only seconds, Cas withdrew and stepped back a pace. He looked at Dean’s face with laser-sharp focus. “Are you alright?”  
  
Dean thought, as much as he was able to think, that it was unfair to expect him to form words right now. He saw Cas’ rising panic, and nodded his head mutely before managing to rasp out: “Yeah”. Cas’ face relaxed in an instant, and he ran a hand fondly through Dean’s hair, bringing him back down to earth. Eventually Dean’s shaking subsided to the occasional fine tremor.

“That was...intense,” Cas said, displaying his gift for exquisite understatement. “I’d almost forgotten. Of course, I did not do it exactly that way with Bobby, for obvious reasons. And I let go before I burned you, this time.”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean said again, swaying slightly.

There was a pulse of pressure in Dean’s ears, a shockwave that caused his heart to skip a beat, and Dean realized that Cas had re-opened his wings. The skin had completely healed over the spangled honeycomb of bone. Light was no longer seeping out, through the fine silver cracks were still visible, as though they had shattered and been reassembled with precious metal. The feathers suddenly lay smooth and imposing, ribbons of starlight. And yet, there didn’t seem to be any new feathers at all. The new ones remained as they were, still sheathed, and the gaps were still there.

“Didn’t it work?” Dean asked, despairing. “Why didn’t they grow back in?”  
  
“It worked,” Cas said, looking at his wings with clinical detachment, as though they were not wonders beyond comprehension, but rather just limbs that had been injured and now were not. “They’re healed, see?” He brought them forward slightly, and Dean was suddenly compassed round with the fearsome symmetry of them. He congratulated himself on not whimpering. “To regrow the feathers would take more power than I’m willing to risk drawing from you. But they will grow back, I hope.”

He smiled at Dean then, a small, almost shy thing. “I feel much better. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Dean said, still staring at the long line of each wing. “They’re beautiful.” He thought he might feel self-conscious saying it so plainly, but it was merely a declaration of fact. _The sky is blue, Sam is my brother, your wings are beautiful, you are beautiful, I…_

“Thank you.”

“Are those _stars_?” Dean asked, reaching out to touch one feather, but stopping just short. “They look like stars.”

Cas fanned one of the wings towards himself and regarded it for a moment, the way someone might regard their own fingernails. “Those are eyes. But yes, they do look like stars. I suppose they are, in a way.”

“Those are _eyes_? You see with your wings?”  
  
“I see with every part of my being. All the time, all corners of Heaven and Earth. Or, for the most part, I do. Things may be concealed from angels, of course, but we were made to watch Creation. And to watch, you need eyes.” He lowered the wing back down, then lifted them up and back. Suddenly, the air split in two again, and they were gone, and Cas was standing there, his normal self, watching Dean with a soft expression on his face.

Dean ached in a way he’d never known was possible, and he could not pinpoint its source.

“Dean, I just want to say…”

But Dean grabbed him by the shoulders and said, as though he were offering a pronouncement. “Cas, you listen to me. When this is over, you are getting out of that Cage. I will march down there and pull you out myself if I have to. I will _not_ abandon you. No matter what. Not ever. Do you understand?”  
  
“Dean…”  
  
“No, Cas. I will come for you if it is the very last thing I do.” Dean said, now gripping Cas’ shoulders hard enough that it would bruise a human being. “Because what is the fucking point of going to Heaven when I die if you’re not going to be there? Do you understand?”

Finally, finally, Cas looked at him.

“I understand.”

Dean let go. “Good.” He straightened his shirt and jacket, which had somehow gotten dishevelled. He felt horribly, totally sober. “Let’s go find them and get this over with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I couldn't decide if I wanted Cas' wings black like space or white like snow. Then I thought ~~why not Zoidberg~~ why not both?_
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> _Is bourbon and a soul makeout session a bit too blasphemous for a Communion? Oh well!_
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> _Questions, comments, recipes and all loose change welcome._
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> _**ETA:** This was only supposed to be 14 chapters, but now it is...more than that. We'll see what the final count is, and if what's left of my sanity survives the trip._


	13. The Emperor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A family reunion and an express flight.

Castiel felt the archangels descending. Before the first rays of the sun even found the little woodland church, a great white-hot wave of light, brighter than his own, flared up behind his vessel's eyes, burning them away to smoking pits. He growled in frustration and refashioned them before Dean could turn around. It served no practical purpose. He could just as easily route all visual input through his true form, but he knew Dean would find it upsetting. Dean seemed very fond of the eyes that Cas wore. He had occasionally picked up some of Dean’s informal prayers that seemed to focus on the color of them specifically. He’d had no say in the genetic quirk that had caused this particular arrangement of rods and cones and pigmentation level, but the fact that Dean felt this way caused a warm, vaguely pleased sentiment that Castiel didn’t fully understand. He was meticulous in his reconstruction.

“Cas? Dude, what the hell?” Dean was saying, and Cas realized that he had dropped to his knees as the shockwave hit him. Dean was crouched next to him. Cas looked up slowly, once he was sure that everything was back in its proper place. Good. Dean gave no indication that anything was amiss.“You alright?”

Cas nodded, still feeling shaken, but overwhelmed with the desire to be on his own two feet for the meeting that was imminent. He grabbed onto Dean’s arm and pulled himself upright. “Yes. Fine. I just...got a message from my big brothers, that’s all.” _And the message was ‘fuck you’._

They knew that they were directly tied to him now, and so he would feel the full effects of their presence on earth. They could have dimmed their glare, if they’d wanted to, but of course, they did not want to. _No one wants to be ordered around by their little brother_ , Cas thought. _Too bad for them_.

“What? What did they say?”

“They said that they’re coming, and they wanted to remind me that they’re, let’s say, um, unhappy with being on my leash.” He rubbed his face and reset the teeth that had come loose when he’d dropped to the floor.

“They’re coming?” Dean asked, and at the fear in his voice, Cas finally looked up at him. “Here? _Now_?”

“Yes. They…”  
  
But he he was cut off as Sam and Elle came bounding up the stairs from the musty recesses of the church’s hidden basement. Elle was holding her shotgun in a vice-like grip, but Sam appeared unarmed.

“Cas, Dean, what...Something’s wrong,” Sam said, looking wild-eyed between them. “What’s going on? I felt, I don’t...Something...something’s wrong.” He seemed almost incoherent.

“We were both asleep,” Elle put in, watching him carefully, with a steadying hand on his arm. “And all of a sudden Sam screamed and sat up like he’d been stabbed.”

“It’s the archangels,” Cas said, and felt a tiny involuntary shudder run through him. He had never quite lost that quirk of humanity. “They’re coming. They’ll be here any moment. But Dean, Sam,” he said, trying to look reassuring. He was unsure if he succeeded. “Listen. They’re adjured to me, as I’ve already said. That was a main tenet of our agreement. They’re bound to my will, and I won’t let them harm you. They are also obligated to follow Hannah’s orders, and I know she will not let them harm you, either. None of you,” Cas added, looking at the three stunned faces surrounding him.

Suddenly, a violent wind whipped around the church, causing the timbers to creak like a ship at sea. The doors seemed to bow inward, as though they were being pressed by a giant unseen hand, and then they flew open with a shriek. Cas felt a taut line of tension pull sharp against the center of his being, and he gritted his teeth. Then the wind died away, as though all the air had been sucked from the world. They turned as one to look toward the narthex, where the doors now tilted crookedly on their bent hinges. A figure stood on the threshold: blond and blue-eyed, with a suggestion of John Winchester’s lantern jaw. It was smiling, a little.

Behind him, Cas felt Sam go rigid, and Dean moved away immediately, to stand by his brother’s side. Cas found himself stepping forward and assuming a fighting stance, protecting the people behind him without even thinking. The figure--and Cas supposed they couldn’t call it Adam any more, though on the surface it wore Adam’s face--took several slow, unblinking steps into the church. The ground seemed to crack slightly under each footfall. Castiel remembered when he had walked the same way, with all the precision of a scalpel, all the crushing weight of a mountain. He did so now, advancing several strides towards his brother and squaring his shoulders.

“Hello, Castiel,” Lucifer said to him. His voice was honey with poison in the finish. He turned his eyes toward the altar and cross. He did not even seem to notice anyone else in the building. “This is cosy. You know, I have always been a fan of irony.”

“You have never had a sense of humor of any kind,” Cas said, between clenched teeth. He made himself relax his jaw.

“On the contrary. Gabriel learned his best jokes from me.”

“Don’t you fucking mention Gabriel to me, you bastard,” Cas said, and he felt Sam and Dean’s eyes turn towards him in shock at the sound of the curse. The word _fuck_ coming from his mouth startled them more than meeting the Devil in a church, which spoke volumes about their lives. Lucifer was needling him, he knew, ferreting out the secret hurts that ran through Castiel like veins of lead through the earth. He needed to collect himself, to subdue the part of him that saw his own brother before him and remember that Lucifer worked for him, a mercenary or a hired gun, but not _family_.

“Please,” Lucifer said, dismissively. “You have been the single most destructive force against angel-kind since time began. It’s remarkable, actually. So spare me the righteous indignation at his death, just because Gabriel was your favorite.”

“Where is Hannah?” Cas asked, changing tactics. “I sent for _her_. Why did she not come?”  
  
“Ah yes, your other little pet,” Lucifer said. He walked past Castiel and toward the altar, continuing to completely ignore the three other people involved. He passed within a few feet of the Winchesters, and Cas felt a stirring of caustic pride as neither of them flinched or drew back. He could not see Elle, but he somehow knew she would be standing her ground, too. “A jumped-up foot soldier running the kingdom,” he said, seemingly to himself. “Unbelievable.”

“She said that you need to be deposited in a specific location, one that you could not drive to. You requested help in getting there,” Lucifer went on, more loudly, perching himself atop the altar with a bored look. “You know that a Gate won’t work for these two.” He turned his attention at last towards Sam and Dean, the merest flit of his eyes. “Or for...that one.” Here, for the first time, Lucifer seemed to waver, just a minute flicker, as he looked towards Elle, who was all but dwarfed by the two men beside her. She was drawn as tight as a bowstring ready to fire. “You’re warded, too? I can’t...see you, either.” He turned towards her more fully, canting his head slightly in confusion.

“Well, I can see you, and you look like a goddamn spoiled brat.”

For a moment nothing happened, then Lucifer stood up, calmly and slowly, and began to walk towards her. Castiel could see the smiting look settle on Lucifer’s face before he had taken two steps, and he called out a harsh command in Enochian that pulled the Devil up short.

“She is with me.” He stepped in front of Elle, shielding her and staring his brother down. He knew, objectively, that Lucifer would not be able to do anything to him, that he was as safe as it was possible to be in this situation, and yet he felt a black banner of pure terror unfurl itself within him, just as he had the last time he had been face-to-face with Lucifer. Though his human vessel was slighter and younger than Cas’ own, Lucifer loomed above him, burning like a star, absolute and terrible. But Cas did not lower his gaze.

The tension left Lucifer’s shoulders, and he looked at Castiel with a genuinely puzzled expression, as though seeing him for the first time in a long time. “You have always been so peculiar, little one.”

“How would you know?” Dean piped up from behind them, sounding piqued. “Cas barely existed when you got kicked to the curb.”

Lucifer and Cas both turned to look at him, and Cas gave him a tiny shake of the head. Mentioning the Fall to Lucifer was best avoided.

But Lucifer didn’t seem fazed, for once. “True,” he said. “But Michael was your commander for a very long time, and he knows all about you and your quirks, Castiel. All those visits to Naomi’s office. Oh, but you won’t remember those, will you? Ah well, I know them.  All that quality time we’ve been spending together has led to some real bonding moments for us, especially where you three are concerned.”

“ _Michael_?” Dean interjected. “Where is that dick, anyway? Last time I saw him, he was wearing the meatsuit you’re currently in.”

“Oh, Michael’s in here,” Lucifer said, tapping his chest. “He just doesn’t want to talk to you.” He smiled, all teeth, and looked at Sam for the first time. “This vessel’s passable, but it’s not the best ride I’ve ever had. At least he’s not so mouthy.”

The crack of Castiel’s hand across Lucifer’s face surprised both of them; he had not even realized that he’d moved. Lucifer blinked, then, inexplicably, began laughing, as though a slap to the face was the funniest thing that had happened to him in a long time. Which, Castiel reflected, it may well have been. He fought down another wave of terror and straightened his tie.

“Michael says not to antagonize you about your pets. He says you’re welcome to them. He says...well, never mind.” Lucifer wiped a few stray tears of laughter from his eyes. “We will never understand you. I will be so glad to get away from this place, from my family’s inexplicable obsession with human beings and the ruin they have made of my mission, and of my home.” He tilted his head, as though listening. “Our home,” he corrected.

“Humanity was our original mission.”

“ _Your_ original mission, maybe, Castiel. But not _ours_. I am a weapon, not a nursemaid. Archangels were made to defeat our Father’s foes. Michael and I are swords, and yet we were to be beaten into plows? Into _playthings_?” The walls rattled slightly as Lucifer’s voice boomed. Through the rose window, the sky began lightening toward dawn, and one star shone amid the pale blue. “And Gabriel. He was the worst of all. You, at least, adhere to some sense of duty. But him? How could he forget his purpose? To amuse himself with pointless pranks? To fall in with lesser gods? To fall in with humans? To take either as _lovers_? An obscenity against his very nature, and a disgrace.”  
  
“That is not true,” Cas said, hotly. “Gabriel was meant to speak for our Father. His purpose was communication. It was what he was for.”

“No wonder he talked so damn much,” Dean said quietly from the background, and Cas could feel him shifting restlessly from foot to foot.

“All of those things--the games, the pranks, the...love-making--were different ways of communicating, for him. He fulfilled his purpose in a way of _his_ choosing.” Cas continued on, as though Dean had not spoken. “And he was able to learn from humans, to learn forgiveness and humility, in a way you have never managed, because you still think of yourself as an instrument, and not as a being capable of change. But you’re not only a weapon, you have... ”

“Ah yes, you and your love of Free Will,” Lucifer cut in, softly, leaning in very close and curling his fingers around the nape of Castiel’s neck. His fingernails cut little bloody crescents into the skin there. Cas fought back the urge to scream. “And how have you found it, little one? Did it never occur to you that you are living my life in reverse? You fell because you love humanity more than Heaven, and I because I loved Heaven more. I fought the Darkness and exercised Free Will, and for my pains I was locked in a cage. You exercised Free Will and now you fight the Darkness. As one brother to another, tell me.” He smiled and released Cas’ neck, stepping back slightly. “How does this story end, Castiel?”

Sam, who had neither moved nor spoken during the entire exchange, suddenly lunged forward with a growl. Cas looked down and saw the hilt of a knife protruding from Lucifer’s chest. He wondered, vaguely, if this was some sort of customary Winchester greeting for angels, as he watched Lucifer regard the knife with a bemused expression. Elle gasped and barely suppressed a shout.

“What did you do that for, Sam?” Lucifer asked, pulling the knife out and dropping it to the floor. “You know a regular knife won’t do the job.”

“No, but it made me feel better,” Sam said coldly, and the look on his face reminded Castiel that this was the boy who had been made to rule Hell. “And it made you stop threatening my friend.”

“Oh, _Sam_.” Lucifer said, sounding genuinely fond. Cas shuddered again. “Never change.”

“As much as I’m enjoying the family reunion here,” Elle said, and her voice only shook a little. “You’ve never actually said why _you’re_ here and not Hannah. How are we supposed to get to Rowena?”

Lucifer raised one eyebrow at her, appraising, and his voice was straightforward and business-like as he spoke to her. “As I said before, you cannot drive there, and a Gate won’t work for the living. You’ll need to fly. And every angel in Heaven has had their wings destroyed by that….that…” He struggled for words here, frustrated.

“Douchebag,” Dean supplied.

Lucifer gestured towards him appreciatively. “That _douchebag_ , Metatron. Fortunately, Michael and I have not been angels in Heaven for a long time.”  
  
“You’re not suggesting…” Elle said, going slightly pale.

“Oh, but I’m not _suggesting_ anything. There is no choice here. You come with us, or you do not get to the field of battle at all.”

“Listen, all of you,” Cas said, quietly, as he turned to face them. “Perhaps it’s best if you do not come. Teach me to do the spell and I will...I will do as I mentioned earlier. There’s no reason to put you in harm’s way unnecessarily.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Cas,” Elle said firmly.

“Can’t, or won’t?”  
  
“Either way, the outcome is the same. This is _my_ spell. You need me there, whether or not I cast it. I insist on coming.”

“I am not letting you go out onto that battlefield without me,” Dean said, stepping very close to Cas and speaking directly into his ear; it was barely a whisper. Cas wondered if Dean was actually speaking directly into his mind. “Not a chance. And you’re not cutting out your grace again. You need your vessel intact, Cas. When I pull you out, you need somewhere to go. Or are you gonna possess some other poor bastard?”

For a moment he wanted to slap Dean, wanted to kiss him, wanted to shake him for being so stupid, for having hope. But all he could do was nod.

“Sam?” Cas asked, knowing how much this would distress him and wishing above anything to spare him undue pain. But Sam still wore his hell-king expression, the kind that made monsters tremble and run.

He nodded once. “I’ll get my things.”

Once the decision had been made, a grim and dreamlike silence descended. Dean moved his car to the shelter of the trees behind the church, away from prying eyes, and Cas knew how it pained him to leave her without shelter. He had never understood humanity’s need to anthropomorphize their belongings, particularly their vehicles. But he knew how strongly Dean was attached to the Impala, how he regarded it in many ways as his family home, as an extension of his own self. He moved his own car next to her, hoping it would give Dean some measure of comfort to think of the Continental keeping her company. Judging by the half-smile that Dean gave him, it might have helped.

“When this is over,” Dean said, as they leaned against the gleaming black hood, “I’ll have Sam drive your pimpmobile to the Bunker so it’s waiting for you when you get back.” He did not look at Cas as he spoke. “We’ll go pick up Claire, too.”

Cas remembered the way Dean had regarded him, all those hours ago, with Purgatory flashbacks swimming in both of their heads. He remembered what Dean had promised, what he had _decreed_. He could almost make himself believe it. He could almost dare to hope. But, Dean's plan was flawed, and…

_Abandon all hope, ye who enter here._

“Dean, you do understand that the Cage is a living thing, right?”  
  
“What do you mean?” Dean turned to look at him, at last, and Cas found himself drifting slightly closer, until their thighs just touched.  
  
“Well, it doesn’t live in the sense that you might understand it, just as I am not alive in exactly the same way that you are,” Cas said. He put his hands in his pockets. “But it is...it has a consciousness. Think of it as a universe built for containment and punishment, just as this one is built for expansion and possibility.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So, it _learns_ , Dean. The Rings and Seals worked once. But even if you had them now, they would not work in the exact same way. You’d have to pick the locks, as I did. And the locks change. They learn even as you are picking them, and so you must be...you must be faster than them, and you must approach them in ways they have not yet learned.”

“Don’t tell me you’re actually trying to convince me not to break you out,” Dean said, practically shaking with anger. His hands were clenched against the edge of the hood, as though he were trying to dent the metal. “Do not tell me to just...leave you there.”

“Dean, I’ve known you long enough to know that I cannot tell you to do anything, my friend,” Cas said, smiling a little sadly. “I just want you...I want to give you an accurate understanding of what it is you’re hoping to do.”

Dean made a noncommittal noise. “Let me tell you something, Cas: I am getting you out of there if I have to break in by myself and wreck the whole place. You say it learns? Well, so do I. I need to pick the locks? I’ve been picking locks since I was nine years old. We’ve got Sam and Elle, and if anyone can figure out a lock-picking spell, it’s them. There is _nothing_ you can do or say that’s going to change my mind.”  
  
“Very well,” Cas said. It was pointless to argue, and this would give Dean a reason to keep living, keep fighting. He could not deny Dean that comfort, even if it was a false one. Instead he employed distraction. “I suppose you had better kiss me, then.”

“What?”  
  
“For luck. It’s customary before going into battle, correct? So. Kiss me.”

And for once in his life, Cas witnessed the miracle of Dean doing as he was told.

****

Cas did not like being flown. It was so different to _flying_. Moving under his own power, with the sturdy joy of his own wingbeats, was something he would never tire of doing (or, at least, remembering). Being _flown_ \--being grabbed by a great set of claws, or by a set of teeth, being yanked upward and across and feeling time and space warp around him without being able to control any of it was...awful. He supposed that he had the advantage over the others, in that he could see the teeth, the claws, the wings. To him it was all solid and real. He knew how they gripped (and here Lucifer was surprisingly gentle and scrupulous, which Cas found startling). He could see the starfire that trailed in their wakes. The others, though, had no actual way to conceptualize what was happening to them and so their minds simply left the space blank. They were ‘zapped’ places, as Dean liked to say, because if they understood the actual means of transport, they would probably die from insanity.

It had been a tense moment, just beforehand. Cas refused to let Lucifer touch either brother, which the Devil found endlessly amusing. Instead, Cas gripped each Winchester by an arm and let Lucifer grab on to him--and here he was neither scrupulous or gentle, leaving blue-black fingermarks under Cas’ clothes.

“Elle, grab onto Dean,” Cas told her, as she watched the goings-on with a stony expression. But she shook her head, stepped up the Devil and grabbed his hand, staring straight into his eyes. An small, strange expression Lucifer’s face, then, for just an instant,  but he just blinked and launched them into the air. Castiel had to admit there was no sight in all of Heaven as beautiful as an archangel’s wings, and part of him ached to see them as they unfurled. He could see, now, where Lucifer and Michael were shoulder-to-shoulder, scarred and battered from their long centuries of confinement, but working together in a strange and predatory symmetry. He had to turn his face away, so bright were they, so beautiful and so terrible.

A moment later, they tumbled to the ground. Damp earth clung to their clothes as they pushed upright and looked around, across the cool green and dove gray that marked the edge of the old world.

Soon after, the ground next to them began to glow, and Hannah emerged, flinty-eyed and square-shouldered. She looked at their group and nodded once. Her air was curt and martial, every inch the leader Cas knew her to be.

“We will have to walk,” she said, with no preamble. “We must sneak up on her, and I can’t risk alerting her to our presence with a closer Gate. Get the Book, get out, do your spell. As soon as it is cast, we will have no need for a Gate and our forces will descend as one. Everything else is prepared. This way.”

And so they set off, as vast, cloudy sky stretched endlessly into the hills, towards the distant red barb of an old tower.

They had come to wage war on the Darkness, and they had come to win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This chapter nearly broke me. This work is now nearly as long as my Masters thesis._   
>  _I like to think that Lucifer would dislike Metatron, because Metatron wanted to keep Heaven for himself out of pure spite, whereas Lucifer wanted his family to join him. Sympathy for the Devil?_   
>  _Cas swearing also kind of does it for me, not even gonna lie._


	14. Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Choose. The outcome is the same.

Dean had forgotten what it was like to land after experiencing angel-flight. He had forgotten the way his blood boiled, how his lungs filled with ice, and his saliva vaporized on his tongue. He had forgotten the way his body did not seem to hang together for a moment, how his nerves and muscles and sinews seemed to forget how to exist, before sealing themselves back around him in an unbroken whole, like an explosion in reverse. It was somehow worse with an archangel than it had been with Cas; perhaps because Lucifer seemed so much bigger and more powerful. He wasn’t exactly sure of angelic rankings--they’d never seemed to matter all that much--but he knew that a seraph was the tier below an archangel. The differences were hard for him to comprehend, since both were so beyond his understanding; but Lucifer had called Cas ‘little one’ several times back in that church (which rankled Dean in a way he couldn’t quite define), and somehow the comedown from the flight he’d just taken drove that point home. Whatever the reason was, when he landed on the ground in the middle of a field, face down in the damp, sweet earth, he’d had to fight to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged.

He only allowed himself a moment to indulge in lying in the dirt, though, and scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could. There was no way he was going to sprawl at Lucifer’s feet any longer than necessary. He brushed the soil from his clothes, and from Sam’s back with several resounding thuds, glaring into the Devil’s vaguely-amused face the whole time.

Now, they were walking in single file. The silvery clouds rolled over the land in great waves. Dean could hear the plaintive wail of seagulls, but he smelled fresh, cold water rather than the briny tang of the sea, and guessed they must be near a river. He wanted to ask where, exactly, they were, but an unspoken order of silence seemed to have followed Hannah’s brief outline of their plan. At the head of their group, he could see Hannah, with her arrow-straight back. The way her head continuously moved told him that she was scanning all horizons for possible threats. She was a good soldier, he had to admit, one of the best he’d seen.

Just behind her was Lucifer, who seemed to slice through the air like a stiletto or a dagger--the kind of knife that was meant to slip quietly between the ribs and pierce the heart. After him came Elle, with her shotgun over her shoulder. In her thin t-shirt, she was inappropriately dressed for the weather;, there was a cold wind blowing, causing the long meadow grass to ripple around their knees, where the remnants of rain clung, soaking their through their jeans.

Directly in front of him was Cas. No matter what he said to deny the fact, he walked with the purposeful stride that marked him out as a commander. Like Hannah, he scanned continuously for anything amiss. The wind ruffled his dark hair and caused his coat to billow behind him with a whisper and snap like a ship's sails, and Dean was reminded irresistibly of dark feathers and wings. That thought made his throat constrict slightly, and he had to swallow to ease the sensation.

And finally, behind him came Sam. He cast a quick backward glance at his brother, and saw the same look of closely-controlled ferocity that he had worn in the church. Dean saw his father in that look, yes, but also something darker and more frightening than John Winchester had ever been. Dean wrenched his eyes forward and squared his shoulders automatically.

It was slow going, for they had to tread carefully through the expanse of open field, aiming for the dark of the woodland that surrounded the battlements on three sides. The tower stood on a hill, and so they had to avoid a direct route to remain unseen. 

Nothing so much as stirred as they finally made their way into the shadows of the trees and stopped. Sam stepped up beside him, silent and coiled like a gun about to fire. "Does this seem too easy to you?" Sam whispered, his eyes darting between the place where the tower was now hidden and Lucifer's back. "I mean, not one demon sign, not a single trap, nothing."

"She probably doesn't want to give her location away too soon," Dean reasoned, only half believing it. "It'd be better to let anybody looking for her just...keep on looking, right? Spring a demon or something too soon and you're bound to know you're heading the right direction, right? I mean, she doesn't know we know where she is. I...don't think."

"Hmm," was all Sam offered, checking his gun and re-positioning the various knives he carried, for easier access. "I've loaded this with Devil's Trap bullets, just in case." He handed it to Dean and pulled out another gun. "This has silver in it." And another, from an inner pocket. "This one has regular bullets." He put these two back, patting them decisively.

"Jeez, Sam, what exactly do you think we'll be facing?"

"I have no idea. That's why I've covered all known contingencies. Will regular bullets even work on her? Will silver? Who knows? All we know is that she's powerful as hell and she's holding all the cards until we cast that spell."

"Nothing survives an angel blade," Hannah cut in, in a low, burning voice. "And if whatever it is won't die quickly enough, we have archangels." She nodded to Lucifer, who was crouched down, peering through the undergrowth, as though he was listening to something beyond the trees. He seemed predatory, leonine. Dean was sharply reminded that Lucifer was, as he had told them, a weapon--a true weapon of Heaven. He had been first of the whole Host, Cas had said, the best and the brightest, Commander before he fell and Michael presumed the role.

“I can’t hear,” Lucifer was saying, with his eyes still trained in the direction of the tower.

“Sorry,” Dean said, automatically, then started at the realization that he’d just apologized to Satan.

“No, I mean, I can’t hear inside the tower. It’s...blocked.” He moved forward another few paces, with the kind of intense, silent grace that defined a serpent. “There’s nothing. It’s a complete absence of sound, like a hole in the sonic landscape.”

  
“I don’t sense anything like that,” Hannah said, moving next to him. She cocked her head to the side, intent.

“You wouldn’t,” Lucifer said, but there was no bite to his voice; he was merely stating a fact. “This is very subtle warding, only an archangel would be able to hear it. Or not hear it. It’s…” He paused, drawing his brows together in concentration. “Yes, I think you might be right. Michael says that it must be a variation of a spell that I created back when…”

But the rest of his thought was lost as a covey of demons suddenly seemed to materialize on all sides, through the mist in the trees. Lucifer sensed them first, standing and turning with viper-like precision. The other angels followed a half a heartbeat later, blades at the ready. The air crackled with heat, and the mist burned clean away. The hair on the back of Dean’s neck stood up as three guns also rose to meet the newcomers.

“Is it you?” one of the demons, a kid in a track suit who looked hardly old enough to shave, asked Lucifer. “We heard rumors. Are you...are you back? Is it really you?” There were six demons in all, fanned around the hunting party with eyes dark and hard as jet.

Lucifer’s lip curled, faintly. Dean remembered the disdain he felt for his own creations, the human souls he had reshaped in the bloody image of Heaven. It was a black mirror of the love his Father felt for humanity. He braced himself for the smiting that he felt impending, but Lucifer lowered his hand and regarded the demons that surrounded them. His head was slightly tipped to one side, his listening-stance, and Dean realized he must be conversing with Michael inside the vessel. Like Cas, his battle-face was a careful blank, and yet, like Cas, Dean could see the subtle workings of a plan forming behind his eyes. The similarity disturbed him.

“It’s me,” Lucifer said, in the same honeyed-venom tones he’d used in the church. “I’ve come back to claim what’s mine.”

_Wait, what?_

Cas’ eyes darted towards Lucifer, sharp and bright as the blade he was now clearly contemplating using on him, but Dean saw the archangel meet his gaze for a fraction of a second, and Cas’ demeanor changed. He saw Cas glance at Hannah, who likewise had trained her attention on Lucifer, and she, too, turned back towards the demons with a pose so non-threatening that Dean knew that she was a heartbeat away from attacking anything that moved.

“But, these are the _Winchesters_ ,” another one pointed out, clearly confused. This demon wore the face of a wizened old man in a tattered flat cap. “And two angels. Why in Hell’s name are you with them?”  
  
“ _They_ are with _me_ ,” Lucifer said, the words slithering out into the thick air. “The Boy King, the Knight of Hell, the Angel-Slayer. All of them. My errant brother and his little friends have all learned their lesson at last. Isn’t that right, Castiel?”

 _Oh,_ Dean thought. _Father of Lies, lying to his own. That’s...that’s good, actually. That’s damn good._

“Yes,” Castiel said, jaw tense.

“Yes, what, Castiel?” Lucifer turned his head to look at Cas and gave him a sharp-toothed grin.

“Yes...my Lord.” There was death in that voice, death beyond death. The roll of Cas’ eyes was the end of a lash, and Dean was glad it was not aimed at him. Lucifer just winked and smiled harder.

He heard Sam draw in a breath, and for an instant feared that Sam would spit out a denial and spoil the whole deal. The world teetered on a knife-edge. But Sam was smart, and Sam knew how Lucifer worked, better than any of them, and kept quiet.

“Who’s that?” asked the young, track-suited demon, pointing at Elle.

“Sacrificial lamb,” Lucifer said.

Without missing a beat, Elle bowed her head, the picture of reverence and submission. “I just want to do my part.”

 _God damn, steel where her spine should be_ , Dean thought again.

“But why don’t you wear your true vessel?” the old man demon asked, gesturing toward Sam now. “Why this--cut-rate version?”

_Oh, shit._

But Lucifer was clever, and cunning, and looked at the cluster of demons as though he was disappointed in them. They shrank back. “I was forcibly removed from my true vessel,” he said, as though giving a lesson to a group of extraordinarily dull children. “For a demon this won’t make a difference, but for an angel? Ah, it creates problems. Sam wants to help me--don’t you Sam? But in order to undo the damage and re-take my rightful place, I need to get that book. The one the witch has.”  
  
The younger demon looked startled. “The big book, made of human skin? She never has it out of her hands. When she’s not holding it, she’s sitting with it on her lap. She sleeps with it under her pillow. I think it’s making her…” But he snapped his mouth shut sharply, looking worried.

“Hmm?” Lucifer asked, stepping closer, radiating paternal interest and magnanimity. “Not going well, is it? It’s starting to...unhinge her slightly, perhaps?”

The demons all shifted uncomfortably but said nothing.

“It’s alright, you can tell me,” the Devil said, tilting his head and furrowing his brow in a display of puppy-dog eyes worthy of Sam. Perhaps, Dean thought with a wave of nausea, that’s where he’d learned it. “I only want to put things right. Any information you can give me to make my job easier will be very gratefully remembered.”

“She keeps...she keeps talking to herself,” a third demon broke in, this one a woman with a severe haircut and an expensive-looking suit. “She keeps talking to herself and saying the name ‘Fergus’, which is the former name of the late King. I mean, the late pretender to the throne.”

“She keeps saying there is no more time to waste, and that Hell isn’t the place for someone with her gifts.” The young demon broke in, animatedly. “She says the God of Abraham and all the the other gods in this world can, um...’get to fuck’. She wants real magic.”

“And she keeps talking about a key. She’s been searching for some kind of key for weeks.”

“She told you all this?” Dean asked, astonished. “She doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d go on long villainous tirades.”

“No, she doesn’t know that we can hear her,” said another demon, who had been silent until now. “She wanders the halls at night, talking to Crowley. Or to herself, I mean. If she thinks anyone is nearby she shuts up. She doesn’t let many demons in the building because of it. It’s usually just her and the man in the sweater, the one who spends his time looking at the Tablet.”

“Thank you,” Lucifer said, smiling. “This is most useful.” Over the course of the conversation, all of the weapons had dropped or been stowed. To anyone that didn’t know better, the atmosphere would have appeared relaxed--a group of friends meeting in the woods, perhaps. But Dean knew better. He saw the way Cas and Hannah both held themselves, as though ready to summon their blades in an instant, the way Lucifer seemed to loom ever closer to the clutch of demons without ever actually moving. From the corner of his eye, he saw the way Sam’s hand rested on his hip, near the pocket where he stored Ruby’s knife.

“Now, we just need to get inside that tower and put things right,” Sam said, looking pointedly at Lucifer and almost suppressing the snarl on his face. “You know, _put things right_?”

“Darling Sammy makes a good point,” Lucifer said, turning back to the demons. “If she trusts you enough to put you on patrol, she must trust you enough to let you know where the hidden entrances are. Yes?”

“Well, that might be a problem,” said the suit-clad demon, looking slightly nervous, “The man she’s got working with her, the annoying one, he’s put up all sorts of angel warding around the place. He says if it’s broken, he’ll know about it. Called it a back-up alarm system. So…”

“Ah,” Lucifer said. He stepped back a few feet towards Hannah, but never removed his eyes from the demons surrounding them. “That would be why he chose the ones you couldn’t sense.” The words were quietly spoken into her ear, so low that Dean almost didn’t catch them.

She drew her brows together in thought. “Yes, I see. But then how will we…”  
  
“Leave that to me.” He turned back to the group assembled before him as Hannah withdrew a few paces to the side, by some unspoken signal. Dean wondered how much conversation was going on in a place he couldn’t see, if Hannah and Castiel and Lucifer were filling up all the space around them, towering thousands of feet into the sky, flaring their wings and looking down on the proceedings from a great height; or perhaps they were all tightly pulled in, an infinite folding of light and fire and wrath and mercy, hemmed in by the confines of a human body. He wondered how they could stand it.

“You raise a legitimate concern,” Lucifer said, giving the demons a beaming, fatherly smile. “But I have faith in you; I know you can help me. Now, one last thing. Tell me, did you see any of these anywhere?” He crouched down and cleared a patch of dirt, where he drew a series of three, unusually intricate sigils.

They had.

“Thank you,” Lucifer said, standing again. “You’ve all been so _helpful_. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my mission is calling. Stay right where you are.” He opened his palms out to them, and as the afternoon sun sworded through the sanctuary of the trees, he appeared illuminated, all kind eyes and gentle hands, a benediction made flesh.

The first demon’s head exploded in a small flare of white light, and it dropped silently. Then the second followed, then the third.

But by then the the remaining demons had caught on, and began to smoke out. Dean scrabbled for the Devil’s Trap gun, but before he even had time to cock it, the remaining demons were dead.

Sam had thrown Ruby’s knife directly into the throat of one demon, just as Cas’ angel blade found another’s heart, and Hannah had launched herself at the last demon and forcibly shoved the smoke back into the mouth of its vessel before smiting it. They had all moved as one, one single entity, dispatching six demons in as many seconds, in almost complete silence. The lingering scent of sulfur mixed with the cool, damp smell of the forest. Dean blinked and lowered his gun.

“Holy shit,” Dean said, looking at Sam, who dislodged the serrated length of the knife from the demon’s throat with a squelch and a loud crack. The head came off and rolled a few feet away. Cas withdrew his blade in a clean and noiseless arc of blood.

“Well, that was exciting,” Lucifer said, blandly. “Now, about these sigils…”

“That’s Old Enochian,” Cas said, completely unruffled, looking down at the glyphs etched into the mud. His blade had disappeared. “They look almost like prototypes.”

“Very good. Yes. These two are mine.” Lucifer pointed. “A binding sigil and a silencing sigil. This one was one of Gabriel’s. A truth compulsion. Neat bit of magic. Extremely painful if done correctly. There’s nothing to actually stop us from entering the building, but getting out? Ah, that’s another story.”

“Well, we can’t break them, so what can we do?” Dean asked, holstering his gun at last.

“We proceed as normal. We go in,” Lucifer said, with a shrug, tapping his long fingers against his chin in thought.

“We just _go in_? And what, wing it?”

At that, Lucifer stopped, went so still that he no longer seemed to be a living thing. Dean remembered the stone flesh of angels, and how he had made such a stone bleed, how he’d made it cry out in the dark. Instinctively, his eyes sought Cas, and he found himself being watched from the shadow of the trees. He could feel the weight and heat of that gaze like the press of a body against his own. Something dark and protective flared in him, then--a brute, base tenderness that he felt in his very marrow, and he had to look away.

“Wing it, yes.” He looked at Elle then, who was staring at the demon’s severed head with a mixture of fascination and horror, and poking it with a stick.

 _Oh my actual god, she’s poking it with a stick_ , Dean thought, and he had to shut his mouth with a click.

“You, girl.”

“Elle.”

“Elle, whatever. How long will it take you to cast this spell of yours?”

She dropped the stick and hoisted her canvas bag onto her hip. “The...spell should only take a few minutes to perform,” she said, carefully, looking at Sam, for some reason. “There are similar ones in my source book. I’ve just combined them with my own equations. I’ve probably gone, uh, way over the top here, but I wanted to be sure it worked.” She looked back at the decapitated demon. “There were people in there. What happened to them? Why didn’t you just exorcise them?”  
  
Lucifer shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Four of them were dead, and two were practically dead, and begging to be let go.”

“Is that the truth?”

“I’ll let you decide.” He looked back at Sam and Dean. “So which one’s it gonna be, boys? Who’s the lucky blood donor? Michael’s swinging for you, Dean; but me, I’m a Sam girl all the way. Tell me quick, I’ve got a hundred bucks riding on this.”

Each of them drew a breath and looked at each other, and Dean felt his heart jerk up into his throat like a fish on a hook.

“Dean, I’ll do it.”

“Sam, no.”  
  
“You were fine with my death before, Dean, why should now be different? If I can stop the damage I caused, then I have to do it.”

“Because…” _Because in a few hours Cas will be gone and I’m afraid I won’t be able to follow either of you. Because you’re the smart one, Sam. Because how am I supposed to get Cas out of that Cage without your help?_ _Because...because…_ God, no, he couldn’t say any of that where Lucifer could overhear. So he settled instead for: “Because it isn’t just me who needs you alive, Sam, it’s your whole family.”

“Dean,” Sam said, stepping close enough that Dean could practically hear his thundering pulse. Or maybe it was his own. “It’s the _whole world_ that needs me dead. I’m doing it, and if you try to stop me, I’ll have Lucifer knock you out and drag you away from here.”

Dean had been wrong. He had been wrong about everything. How had he not understood? Four would walk in and only three, if they were very lucky, would walk out again. Dean had been wrong, he had miscalculated, and Cas had tried to tell him without actually telling him and, oh God and all His useless damn angels, _why didn’t he ever think things through?_

Sam had been planning on this the whole time, Dean suddenly understood. Spending the night with Elle in the church basement hadn’t just been about getting some sleep. Sending Cas out with two bottles of bourbon hadn’t been hadn’t just been about giving him and Dean space to talk. Sam had maneuvered them all. Cooly, with precision and cunning. He’d only brought Elle along because she insisted, because she wanted to make sure he did it right. Sam had planned on doing it this way all along.

Dean knew, in the dim and hidden part of himself that allowed moments of honest reflection, that Sam’s life was in some ways the crux of his own. It was something inextricable, bound up in his DNA. It wasn’t the need to keep Sam _safe_ , because Sam was never, could never be _safe_ , by dint of who he was and what he did. But there was an almost animal need to keep Sam _there_ , keep him within reach. If Cas was the star by which Dean navigated, then Sam was the moon that directed the tide on which he sailed. He rose and fell by Sam’s regard, just as he drove himself forward by Castiel’s. And it dawned on Dean, then, that in a few hours time, he would be adrift with no map and compass, and no hope of finding land. Without the Mark’s constant background noise, the reality of it threatened to flay him where he stood.

But Sam was right. Sam was many things: kind and gentle and ruthless and cruel; but he was above all things a reasonable man, and he was right. What Dean wanted, what Sam wanted, even what Cas wanted, did not matter in the face of so much suffering. And so, with memories of Stull Cemetery crowding his throat and splintering through his ribs, he nodded. “Right,” he said, surprising himself when his voice did not shake. “You’re right, Sam. We’ll do it your way.”

Sam dipped his head once, a tense, jerky motion, as decisive as a bullet through the heart. “Right. Good.” He took a deep breath and looked Dean in the eye. “I should probably go alone, then. Have the angels drop me off and get you the hell out of Dodge. Grab the Book, do the spell, game over.”  
  
“Absolutely not,” Dean said, his sadness sharpening itself to anger in an instant. “No. They can get us out of there at the end, but I’m not letting you do this alone. I was with you at the end before, I’m going with you now. At the...um, final end.”

Sam laughed at that. “The first end, and now, the final end. The end-ier end.” He started giggling, helplessly, with a note of delirium and exhaustion, and he could not stop.

And Dean could not help himself, either; he laughed right back, jagged peals of it ripping from his throat almost against his will. “Yeah. The End, Two: This Time, It’s the End.” A parade of deaths filled the space between Dean’s lungs and his heart, crushing them. So many deaths: his own, Sam’s, Castiel’s, thousands of others, and oh god, he had killed so many, he had died so many times; his soul was carrion, it split open, bared its cold bones, spilling blackness under a white desert sun, it was not fit for the blood-soaked gardens of Heaven or the charnel pits in Hell. So many deaths, that the word should have lost all meaning. He thought he might throw up. He folded down, bracing his hands on his thighs, and tried to breathe. Saliva pooled in his mouth, and he spat it out on the ground. He kept laughing.

_Well, what’s one more?_

For a moment, the only sound in the whole world was that of their laughter ricocheting through the trees. It was the sound of crows on the gibbet of a bald hill, and it was the sound of children playing in the courtyard of a cheap motel.

It dawned on Dean that they were being watched by three angels, who were rendered mute and immobile as statues at the spectacle. Even Lucifer himself did not seem to know what to do with the scene before him, glancing between Dean and Sam’s slow descent into hysteria, and Castiel’s wide-eyed expression, as though trying to gauge if this was normal behavior.

Sam straightened up before Dean could manage it, and pulled his brother upright by the collar of his jacket. His face was set hard and implacable again. “Dean.” The delirium was gone. “It will be fine. We know what happens after. It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, I know, Sam, I know. I’ll follow you sooner rather than later, kiddo. Soon as I’ve done what I need to do, I’ll be right there after you.” He wiped the back of his hand across his face and willed the remaining tears back behind his lashes.

“Looks like you won your fucking bet,” Sam spat at Lucifer, zipping up his jacket against the encroaching chill.

And all the angels remained silent.

Finally, it was Elle who roused them, with the small, quiet observation that it was growing dark, and that they had work to do.

A light rain began to fall. It was the end of the thirty-eighth day since the coming of the Darkness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This is it. This is the one that broke me. I have yet to recover._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _The place where I live now is riddled with castles, due to long and bloody Border wars. They're just...everywhere. The tower in this chapter is an amalgamation of several of my favorites, but it's most strongly based on one in particular. Can you guess which? ;)_
> 
>  _Oh, also, 'get tae fuck' is one of my favorite Scottish sayings ever. It basically means go to hell but it's more fun to use. I don't tend to write in vernacular pronunciation very much, though._  
>   
> 
> _The next chapters will probably be delayed, because I will be away on a family trip and won't have time to edit or post anything, just FYI._


	15. The Empress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a trap, but for whom?

Sam and Dean’s laughter rang in Castiel’s ears like an executioner’s bell, its leaden throat resounding to affirm the crucifixion. His whole being reverberated with it. As they walked, the woods grew shadowed, and the shadows deepened and lengthened. It was very dark. For a moment Castiel forgot that he was an angel and was instead a condemned man stumbling blindly towards the place of his death. He shook his head, sharply, as though to dislodge the unwanted thought, and remembered himself. _Get a grip_ , a voice that sounded remarkably like Dean’s said in his head. He remembered: Angel of Temperance. And so he would temper himself--curb the fear the writhed just below his skin and harden himself against self-pity. He had a job to do and he would do it, that was all. What came after was not his concern right now.

The archangels felt the warding before he did. Their vessel pulled up sharply for a moment, breaking the careful spy’s tread that Lucifer used, then proceeded on again, albeit with a distinct line of tension between the crest of each shoulder blade. When he turned his perception outward, he saw that their four great wings were drawn tightly up and back, curving scythe-like behind them. Preparing for a dive--but whether in evasion or attack, he could not say. Instinctively, Cas did the same.

“By the way,” Lucifer whispered, in an incongruously light tone of voice, when they had come to a stop just before the break in the trees, “I  hope you don’t mind, but I had a look, and your wings look much better than they did when we last spoke, Castiel.”

“Your point?”

“No point, brother,” Lucifer said, with an elaborate shrug. “Just...impressed at your healing abilities, considering. Unless you...had a helping hand in the process?” He turned to look at Cas then, with one brow arched, and his eyes glittered in the dying light. Behind him, he felt Hannah jolt slightly as the words, as their subtle meaning sunk in.

Lucifer was watching him with a knife-edge smile, hoping to draw blood. Cas grabbed him by the jaw and turned his face back toward the foot of the tower, which was just visible through the trees. “If you don’t mind, we have a fortress to break into.”

“You’re no fun.”

“That’s an accurate assessment of my character. Now focus. You, too, Leader of the Host. I expect less idle chatter from Heaven’s two most famous generals.”

Lucifer crossed his arms, crouched in his ‘listening pose’. “The Leader of the Host says he’d like to burn your eyes out again. And...oh, no, that’s just un-repeatable, Michael. You’re a bad influence on me.” Cas’ gaze did not falter or soften, and Lucifer sighed. “Fine, fine. We can’t locate her in there because of the silencing sigil, so there’s no hope of simply landing on her. Or Metatron. We don't even know if they're in there. We cannot tell how many demons she has in there, if any. There is...there is old magic around this place. But nothing I can sense will keep us out. Michael and I will go in and raze it to the ground, break the warding, kill everything that moves in there.” His grace--or perhaps it was Michael’s; Michael lacked Lucifer’s subtlety---flared up momentarily in pleasure at the thought, illuminating their body from the inside like a lantern, the bones and blood vessels thrown into relief like shadows on a screen.

“Lucifer, don’t....” _Don’t give us away, you fool,_ he meant to say, _You know as well as I do that this is a trap._

“And risk damaging the Book?” Hannah whispered, at the same time. “It’s our only means of holding the Darkness at bay until the Host arrives, and...”

The argument would have continued, Castiel was sure, but just then he felt something cold and hard clamp down on his wings, pinning them to the ground. He nearly toppled over. From the gasp that Hannah gave, she must have felt the same thing.

“Or we can get captured,” Lucifer said, with a spike of pain  in his voice. “That works, too.” Then, he laughed, but the laugh came up bloody. “Michael, don’t move. You’ll make it worse.” He fell to the ground and curled in on himself, still laughing, but otherwise immobile. Hannah remained frozen in place, with her eyes closed. Sam had grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to keep her upright, and Elle was trying to get her to explain what she was feeling, so that she might break the spell. But Hannah could only shake her head.

Suddenly, Dean was at Castiel’s side, pulling on his arm, his hand, holding his face between wind-chapped hands, looking into his eyes. “Cas, what’s wrong? What’s going on? Is this the binding sigil?”

“This is…this is some kind of variation on it. Longer-range. Something of Rowena’s. Modifying the Enochian spell. It feels different. I think it might be...” He gritted his teeth and frustration. Every move he made seemed to bind him tighter and made whatever it was that coiled around him dig in deeper. _Soldier, be still_ , he commanded himself. Yes. There. That was better.  The coils loosened themselves slightly.

“Dean. Listen.” He gestured with his head, an abrupt upward jut of the jaw, the only part of himself, on either plane, that it did not hurt to move. Dean leaned in close, and Cas smelled the shampoo he had used, the dusty-sunlit smell of the Impala’s interior, the dirt and dried blood from his near miss with the werewolf. All these small, mundane things crowded in on him for a moment, a catalogue of the quotidian joys and sorrows that he would soon have to relinquish. He closed his eyes and made himself speak, quietly and rapidly.

“I’ve sewn a pocket into the lining of my overcoat. Next to my tattoo. Reach in and take what’s in there. Hide it. Do not tell me where you’ve put it. Be quick. Do you understand?”

“Right,” Dean said, and suddenly Cas felt the skim of his hands, with their cutpurse’s grace, against his hip. In another instant, Dean had stepped away and returned. Dean looked Cas in the eye, and Cas knew that it was done.

“Thank you.”

Suddenly, the cold, hard pinions around Castiel dug in, and his vessel gave an involuntary jolt. He did not have time to react to this turn of events, because an instant later he heard a familiar voice, a voice he had been expecting to hear and yet which still caught him by surprise.

“Hello, Castiel.”

“Metatron.”

“In the flesh! Say, do you want to see a neat trick? This might sting a little.”

In the dark, Cas could see the scarlet outline of a banishing sigil on the nearest battlement wall, where Metatron was now standing. Next to him, he felt the barbed magic surrounding Lucifer and Hannah loosen, while the coils pressed even tighter against him. And Castiel saw what was coming.

“Grab Hannah, _now_!” Cas yelled at Lucifer and Michael. He did not even notice that it had come out in Enochian.

In the space of time it took Metatron to press his blood-daubed hand to the sigil, the archangels had seized Hannah and wrapped both their wings and arms around her. There was a tremendous flash of white light. Castiel felt himself being hauled backwards, ripping through the thin veil that separated this plane from the celestial one, as though God had grabbed him by the roots of his hair. But he stopped short, hard and sudden, like hitting a wall. On earth, he bruised his tailbone as he hit the ground. For a long moment he could do nothing but stare at the shapes of the trees as they stretched into the night sky.

“You _dick_!” Cas heard Dean’s voice from somewhere very remote, and there was a volley of noise that he would later recognize as gunfire. Abruptly it fell silent, and Cas thought it odd that he had not heard one note of birdsong since they’d entered the woods. His vision whited out, then cleared, then whited out again, as though a shroud or a veil was being raised and lowered over him. Once, he thought he felt hands on him--warm and strong and rough---but he could not say on which plane it was happening, nor how long had passed.

At  some indeterminable point,  Metatron’s face appeared above him, smiling. Cas felt a hand pat his cheek. “Hey, don’t get all weird on me now.”

The world tilted and then settled as Cas sat up. As he did so, tongues of holy fire shot up to hem him in on all sides. Cas automatically looked around him, checking all angles, and saw that he was now inside the tower itself. He was laid out on the chequerboard floor, yellowed with time and countless smoky fires, in front of a cavernous, soot-blackened fireplace. A quick mental check of himself revealed only surface damage, which he healed. That, at least, was a blessing. His friends, and Elle’s bag full of spell ingredients, were nowhere to be found, however.

“What did you do?”  
  
“Oh, that? Told you it was a neat trick. My little Scottish friend taught me that modification. I knew you’d show up sooner or later, I just didn’t know when. Fortunately for me, your scout would make a _terrible_ sniper. _Any_ way. I’ve sent your backup far, far away, and by the time they get back here, you’ll all be dead.” As he spoke, Metatron  held Cas’ own blade by the hilt, balancing the point on one of his fingers and twisting it slightly, as though testing the weight of it.

“Where are my friends?”

“Ugh, you know, you are so single-minded, Castiel. Not one scrap of curiosity or appreciation for creativity anywhere in you. You’ve got all of the angelic traits I hate and none of the ones that I like.” Being mortal clearly did not agree with Metatron, who presumably had not had the chance to grab a decent meal or shower in over a month. But there was a manic edge to his smile, made all the more noticeable in the flickering light of the holy fire, like a child who had caught a bird and was anticipating plucking its feathers out, one by one.

“Tell me or kill me, but spare me the monologue.”

Metatron rolled his eyes. “You can’t play along for just a few minutes? Seriously. This is the part where I’m vindicated! This is the part where you’re supposed to stall for time in a vain hope of rescue. Come on, you’re supposed to be good with pop culture tropes now.”

“This isn’t one of your stories, Scribe.”

“ _Everything’s_ a story, you dumb jock. Can’t you just play your part for once?”

 _Right. Focus_. “I thought you...I thought you were aiming to be the hero of this tale. Instead you’re working with Rowena? How is that in any way heroic?” If he could just lure him a little closer, if he could just find some way to break the circle. There was a loose stone on the ceiling. Could he maneuver Metatron under it and bring it down on his head? That had worked once with Meg. No, the distance between Metatron and the fire would be too great by about four inches. There was dampness within these stones, this close to the river. Could he summon it up to extinguish the fire? It would be taxing without a direct pipeline. Or maybe...Cas went through almost a hundred scenarios by the time Metatron drew his next breath, discarding each one in turn.

“The story’s taken me more in an anti-hero direction, it’s true,” Metatron admitted, tucking the blade into his belt. “But this is the end of the long second act. My redemption arc begins now, when I reclaim my grace, banish the Darkness, and kill everyone who had a hand in releasing it, including the witch. All shall love me and despair.”

That drew Cas up short, and he stopped in his ceaseless calculations. The path suddenly spread out before him. It was studded with rocks and thorns, true, but it was a way forward, none the less. He turned on Metatron then, with his expression carefully neutral, and was glad the Scribe could no longer see the plane on which all four faces turned towards him, with teeth bared.

“I don’t have your grace.”

“Well, duh. Even you’re not that stupid. Plus, I checked you over already. But you will tell me where it is.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Besides our palpable chemistry? Because I might let Dean Winchester live if you do.”  
  
“He’d only hunt you down.”  
  
“I think I could make him obey one way or another,” Metatron said with a bland smile.

Castiel almost laughed at the the thought of Dean displaying any form of genuine obedience to someone other than his father. _No. Focus._ What he needed right now was to get in the same room as Elle and the Winchesters, into the same room as the spell ingredients. The banishing sigil would have weakened his three siblings, but Lucifer and Michael were archangels, they would recover much sooner than any other Heavenly creature, and Hannah was with them. It did not escape Castiel’s notice that Metatron had called Lucifer his ‘scout’, rather than by his proper name. Metatron did not know who he was up against. They had that advantage, and Castiel needed to press it. He just had to get this spell done. And to do that, he needed...

“Promise me that you won’t hurt him, and I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

Metatron laughed, a cackle of pure delight, and clapped his hands together. “Oh, that’s fantastic! Just fantastic. You’re so Byronic! Those brooding good looks, all that lonely defiance, all that scorn, and yet you just _melt_ whenever someone threatens a hair on his head. It’s your fatal flaw.”

“Metatron, please. Just take me to my friends, let me see Dean, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“Fine,” Metatron sighed. “I’ll take you to them. But I should tell you--what you felt earlier? That was a parlor trick. Try and escape and I’ll cut you into pieces before you can blink. You and your vessel.” For emphasis, he tapped the hex bag that hung at his side, and Cas felt an echo of the bindings bite at him.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Good.” Metatron said. He threw some sort of liquid onto the ring of fire, breaking the line. “Because I had to use an angel suppressing sigil to get you in here, and since your vessel’s empty, we had to drag your heavy ass the whole way.”

“How inconvenient for you.”

“Shut up. Get upstairs, to the very top. Lady MacBeth will be back soon, and I’d like to do this with minimal insane ranting. The hot ones are always crazy, aren’t they? Oh, well.”

Cas climbed the stairs, which spiraled ever upwards in little uneven stages, until he reached the top. It was open to the sky, with the roof and most of the exterior wall missing, but he could see the glamour that clad it, now, and inside it was warm and dry and hung with tapestries that kept the chill from mousing in. A detached part of Cas admired the beauty and economy of the spellwork that Rowena used, but the larger part of him was focused on the three figures that were lying crumpled on the ground in front of a dark, ornate throne. On the wall next to it, he saw a silencing sigil. There were bound to be others, but if he could just break one, he could crack the bell jar and slip a call through to Lucifer and Michael.

“What did you do to them?” Cas demanded.

“Oh, I didn’t do anything, they walked up here of their own accord, they surrendered their weapons of their own accord, they sat down of their own accord. I wasn’t going to drag three adult humans up that many stairs. Especially this giant freak.” Metatron said, nudging Sam’s unresisting shoulder with his foot. “Heck, Dean even pulled you inside himself! Subordination spell,” he clarified, at Castiel’s furrowed brow.

“One of _Rowena’s_ spells? It will kill them! They’re fatal to humans.” He knelt down and ran his hands over each of them. He could not sense any injuries, but there seemed to be dead space under his hand. Except...Wait. He inhaled sharply but kept his face a careful blank. He remained kneeling between Dean and Elle, with his palms still outstretched on their backs.

Metatron shrugged. “She might have mentioned something about that. My memory’s not what it was, you know.”

“I said I’d tell you what you want _if_ you didn’t hurt him.”

“And I said I _might_ let him live, I didn't say anything about hurting him. And you know what, I probably will let him live. I’ll just remove his soul and demonize it, like I’d originally planned. Heck, most of the work’s already been done for me.”

“Why...would you even do that?” Cas said, with his hands still flat on Elle and Dean’s back.

“Because _fuck you_ , that’s why, Castiel.”

Castiel rolled his eyes. He couldn’t help it. In response, he felt the sharp bands of magic dig into him, warningly. He held still. “That’s...that’s the reasoning of a child. You’re not stupid, you must realize that. That’s _Lucifer’s_ reasoning, Metatron,” he said, between gritted teeth.

“Lucifer lost control of his narrative, whereas I have not. Did you miss the part where I’m going to _save_ this little pissant planet? The one that _you_ helped damn?”

Castiel felt a stirring at the center of him, like the pull of a kite-string in a breeze, where the archangels were bound to him. _Speak of the Devil_ , he thought. They were regaining their strength with incredible speed. Good. It would only be a matter of time before they descended again.

“And then do what? Declare yourself God again? Do you see who you’re talking to? Trust me when I tell you that you do not want the job. Not even _God_ wants the job.”

“You’ve never even met God, so don’t bother trying to understand all the ways you couldn’t hope to follow in His footsteps.”

There was the faintest hint of movement from Elle, but Dean was still, unnaturally still, and Sam was sprawled in a position that was sure to leave him with a sore back when he stood again, crumpled in a heap like a marionette with severed strings. Cas stood and stepped to the edge of the bearskin rug where the three were laid out. Only a foot or so separated him from the sigil now. He needed to get over to that wall without being obvious.

“We’ve wasted enough time. Tell me where my grace is so I can get started.”

“I don’t know where it is,” Castiel said.

“You hid it somewhere. Didn’t you? You stole my idea.”

“I did not hide it, no. I just don’t know where it is.”

“Oh, please. The Great Castiel! Slayer of demon hordes and besieger of Hell! For him, the earth quakes and the sky bleeds!”

“Please stop describing me.”

“You’re meant to be one of Heaven’s greatest strategists and you’ve _misplaced your bargaining chip_?” Metatron went on, undeterred. “Did you know that I documented some of your campaigns? Was that all just PR?” He laughed, and it was the sound of glass shattering, a dog baying for blood. “But then again, you’re also the poor sap that got outsmarted by this little old pencil-pusher. How many times have you been duped into ruining one realm or another? So maybe you actually are that dumb.” He sighed, and looked towards the ceiling, like a long-suffering teacher faced with an intractably dim student. He crushed his hand around the hex bag and Castiel felt himself go rigid with pain.

“There’s no need for that,” Cas said, panting a little--it felt odd that he needed to do so, despite not needing to breathe; it was as though the pain demanded it. But he could use this. He could turn it to his advantage. He put his hand to his face, to wipe away the tears that he had called up there.

“Angel of Tears crying some of his own now, huh?” Metatron asked, releasing the hex bag.

Castiel did not answer, but staggered a little, bracing himself against the wall as though to keep himself upright. His dampened hand smudged the edge of the sigil slightly, breaking the line. It flickered black-red behind him as it died, and the walls seemed to shake. Metatron glowered.

“A lot of good that will do you.”

Cas closed his eyes and slid down the wall. He was directly in front of Sam now. He kept his eyes shut. He did not know how well the archangels could hear him but he sent up a call, a plea to stay silent, stay hidden, avoid any kind of light show. Hannah would still be weakened from the banishing, and so she needed to be deposited somewhere safe nearby. _Be gentle with her_ , he ordered. _She is the only one of us worth anything when this is over._  

“Fine, if this doesn’t motivate you, we’ll do it the old-fashioned way.” Metatron stepped back a pace, next to the door frame, and slammed his still-bleeding palm against another sigil.  And this was not pain, per se, no, this was different; it had the clinical rattle of Naomi’s office, the surgical sterility of a bright white room and lots and lots of time. _Sinner, confess so that you might be purified,_ a voice that was Castiel’s own boomed in his head. He opened his eyes.

“Good. Now. Castiel, tell me: where is my grace hidden?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Castiel said, and the compulsion did not stir, for he was telling the truth.

Metatron let out a low, irritated sound. “Very well, then. I’ll rephrase.” He had drawn closer to Cas, and stood looking over him from a few feet away. “Who has my grace now?”

“I….don’t. I don’t know.” That one was harder, and something dull and crushing settled on him momentarily. He remembered that sensation. Lies crushed, defiance incised. He’d have to tell the truth and behave as he did it. _Oh_. This might be more difficult than he'd thought.  This had almost been a lie, until he remembered that Dean may have given it to someone else. He had not seen where Dean had gone. It was the truth. The pressure relented.

“God damn it, I can see you trying to lawyer your way out of this, Castiel, and I don’t have time for your crap. Who did you give it to? Tell me or I kill them _all_ and make you watch. _Who?_ ”

Cas took in a breath, and the words were so close to tipping from his mouth that he had to turn his head and bite into the the solid flesh of his arm to keep them back. And there it was, the incision, right in the heart of him. Worse was the knowledge that he was doing it to himself, all of it. He remembered how they did not even need to hold him down for his confession, but how he would rip it out of himself, piece by piece, given enough time, before the reindoctrination even began. How many times had this been done to him? How many times that he did not remember? There was no time to wonder. He had to say something _now_ , or this whole plan was going to evaporate. But what could he say, what would be true and yet….

 _True. True._ “I gave it to one who called me by my true name.” The scalpel retreated, and no compression followed. He relaxed.

“Your tr---you bastard, _how are you lying?_ You haven’t even _met_ God. How are you doing this?”  
  
“I am not lying.”  
  
“No? Okay then, sure. Sure. Walk me through this, slugger.” Metatron said, crouching down in front of him. “You gave it back to God. Sure. It seems like you even believe it! What’s your game plan here, huh? Enlighten me. You gonna call our Father down to get you out of a pinch?”

Castiel smiled. “In about twelve seconds I’m going to render you unconscious and tie you to that chair over there. Then I plan to complete the spell we’ve come here to do. I may or may not break your nose. I haven’t decided yet.”

Metatron blinked and rocked back a little, then raised his eyebrows as he stood. “Very _True Lies_. But how, exactly, are you planning to do that, when I have this baby, here?” He patted the hex bag at his hip.

“Now that you’ve showed him where it is, Sam is going to kick you to the ground and take it from you.”

“Sam is...”

Metatron went flying as Sam planted a hard kick to the back of his knee. It was an awkward angle, but Sam was strong and he was angry, and his legs were very long. Those three things combined to send Metatron flying straight at Castiel, where he landed face down on the stones. Sam staggered to his feet and snatched the hex bag away, holding it above the nearest brazier until it burst into flames. It released acrid smoke.

“Sam, the sigil.”

“On it,” Sam said, picking up one of the heavy, leaden candlesticks and smashing it against the wall, where the stone cracked. Again the sigil gave its death flare and again the walls shook a little.

Cas hauled Metatron up by the shoulder. The impact seemed to have rendered him unconscious, but Cas gave him a hard smack across the face, just to be sure.  No reaction. He dragged him to the nearest chair, yanking down a tapestry as he went. He used the rope to secure Metatron to it. Cas looked at him now, slumped over, dead weight, with a scrape above his left eye that was slowly trickling blood. True to his word, however, he pressed his fingers to Metatron's forehead. "That should keep him under long enough for us to do the job."

He felt Dean behind him, then. He stepped back away from the chair and straight into Dean’s chest; Dean’s breath caressed the back of his neck for an instant before he pulled Cas around to face him. Dean looked dazed, and his words were slightly slurred as he said: “Cas, you alright, buddy?”

“Yes, I’m fine now, Dean.” He took Dean’s face in his hand, tipping it gently left to right by the jaw as he watched Dean’s eyes carefully. He was alarmed at how pliant Dean seemed to be, given their audience. “Are you? What did he do to you?”

“He...I don’t…”

“He hit Dean twice with that fucking spell,” Elle supplied. She had already clambered to her feet and retrieved her bag, looking critically at the contents of the various jars and bottles. “Damn it, some of the tincture of chicory spilled. _Fuck_. No, wait, it’s okay, I have a spare bottle.”

“Elle, what do you mean?”

“When Metatron had him grab you to carry you in here,” Elle said, carefully wiping up the spilled liquid, “Dean basically put a hand on you and then seemed to...snap out of it, kind of. You know, he sort of woke up, and then he started to realize what was happening, and Metatron had to hit him with it again.”

Dean had staggered back and was leaning against the long wooden table now, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m fine,” he mumbled, sounding decidedly less than fine. “I’m fine, really.”

“Wait, how do you know this?” Cas asked.

“Because it started wearing off of me after about five minutes. I just didn’t want to show my hand too soon since I dropped my gun somewhere out there when I got hit. Needed to get to a weapon, first and make sure I was thinking clearly.”

“Metatron went downstairs to...do whatever it was he was doing with you, and Elle burned the hex bags,” Sam said, now scratching every visible sigil he could find. The walls trembled with each one that broke. "And gave us some kind of...I don't know, pill."

"Dragon's blood, salt and cocaine."

"Seriously?"

"It'll uncross pretty much any hex I've come across. I always keep a stock of those handy. It only partially worked on this one, though. Must be the Enochian magic."

"And you did it without speaking an incantation. That is _impressive_ , my dear."

As one, the group turned. Dean, still coltishly unsteady on his feet, stumbled a little as he reached for his gun, only to realize that he didn't have it. Elle straightened from her crouch, eyes wide, and Cas saw her slip something into her pocket. Rowena seemed to materialize out of the rippling air. Out of the smoke she rose, with her red hair, a bright spear on a staff of dark wood. For a moment, the Darkness fanned around her like a set of wings, and Castiel had to blink at the sight. She carried the Book of the Damned under her arm.

Sam grabbed Metatron by his hair, and his head lolled back. "You move, I'll kill him with my bare hands."

"Ha! Is that meant to _dissuade_ me? By all means, kill the sniveling little git. He's done nothing but hit on me and plot to kill me since he got here. I've only been keeping him around in case that Tablet of his came in handy. Bit of a moot point now, though." Rowena moved through the room serenely, with a small smile on her face, but Cas could see, at occasional intervals, how she screwed her eyes shut and pursed her lips together for a fraction of a second, as though she kept hearing an unpleasant noise. He still had his blade, if he could just get a clean shot he could pierce her heart, right where the dark fabric of the gown was slashed and the white flesh showed through, almost an invitation. But the Darkness continued to billow and curl around her, a sinuous, shadowy echo of her movements, and he knew that his blade would be lost to it the minute it made contact.

She saw him looking. "Ah, I see the Winchesters' hound is still as loyal to his masters as ever. Don't even think about it, Feathers. I'll have you howling at the moon again before that knife's even left your hand. Besides," she added, "Kill me, and this whole place crumbles. I'm the only thing holding it together at the moment." She withdrew a piece of chalk from a gilded box on the table, and, humming to herself, she began to draw the outline of a door on the nearest wall. The Darkness seethed around her as she knelt, submerging her and then parting like a black ocean.

"What are you doing?" Elle asked, edging over to where the other three stood in a tense little tableau.

"This? Oh, one of the downsides of glamouring a ruined castle is that there are no actual doors to speak of. So one learns to improvise."

"But..."

"Oh, do stop trying to distract me. Your annoying little scribe friend over there might be big on the speeches, but I have always been a woman of action, myself." The chalk door was now complete, drawn in spare, straight lines. She smudged a silvery powder across it and spoke a few words in Gaelic, which Cas recognized as a manifestation charm. The lines began to glow red-gold. When they faded, a door stood in their place; a real door, solid and burnished with the work of careful hands, with ornate hinges and a brass keyhole and knob turned green with age.

"Well, it's been fun," Rowena said pleasantly, "But I'm afraid I must be going." She reached into the neck of her gown and withdrew a long, thin chain. At the end of it was a Key to Oz. She smiled at them, then, and raised her arm, and the Darkness surged towards them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Hi! I got back the other night but have been at work for basically two days straight, so I am furiously editing and re-writing to try and get this thing finished ASAP._   
>  _I don't know what to say about this chapter, except that I was interested in a few things:_   
>  _1.) Angels are kind of like terrifying, enormous children sometimes. Cas is more like a teenager, since he's been finding his own identity the longest of any angel (except Anna; oh, how I miss you, Anna)._   
>  _2.) I imagine Naomi and Co's office to operate on an auto de fe system, similar to the Spanish Inquisition._   
>  _3.) I think angels don't really see each other's true forms on earth unless they specifically look._   
>  _I hope I've succeeded at least a little here._


	16. Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The return of the redhead.

Castiel was certain of two things. One, that he was an angel of dubious and questionable provenance, and two, that Dean Winchester loved him back.

The first, he had known for some time--ever since he had watched Dean recovering in that hospital bed after his encounter with Alastair and had longed to heal him, despite his orders. _You need to learn to manage a damn Devil’s Trap_ , Dean had said, broken and vulnerable but still full of fire and life, and Castiel had felt the first hairline fractures of doubt appear in his being. Or before that, perhaps. Naomi had told him he’d come off the assembly line with a crack in his chassis. Perhaps Dean had merely completed the work that God had begun those many, many millennia before.

 The second, he had suspected for...well, he did not know, exactly. The different shades and textures of emotions still often confounded him. He did not understand what he was feeling much of the time. He only understood that he _felt_. He had not understood what he’d felt for Dean, not at first. He had sensed it like a figure in the dark, whose name he did not know, for the naming of things was not a right given to angels. It was only when he effectively ceased to be one that his suspicions revealed themselves in their true form. There on the cold stockroom floor, the glory of it had shone around him, and he was terrified.

Cas understood even less what other people felt, how they loved: how they categorized it, how they arranged their hearts around it, why they acted on some iterations but not others, what was hidden, what was seen. Where Dean was concerned, this was especially true. He had suspected it of Dean during the long Purgatory nights, when Dean had curled against Cas like a child and let him stand guard under the pale cataract of the moon. He had suspected it when Dean had handed him back his coat, which still stank of Leviathan, on the lawn of that hospital. No. Before that, even. That strange, still-unexplained command: Don't ever change. The dim glow of a streetlamp. The smile on his face.

He had suspected. But back then, Cas could not name it and did not know its form.

It was love that had set him running, like a clockwork soldier; but it was a fearsome kind of love, devouring and jealous and full of absolutes, black and white like dunes bleached by the noonday sun, like stars in the night sky. What he felt for Dean, what he felt for Sam, or for Claire, or for humanity as a whole, these feelings were more difficult and yet more beautiful. They added color to the endless horizon: the soft green of forests and the red of blood and the downy gray of snow-heavy clouds, and thousands more, colors beyond naming. And Dean was the cool pure azure of the well in the wasteland, toward which Castiel had been dragging himself, unaware, for years.

_Faith is knowing that somewhere, the desert holds water. The trick is to keep looking._

And so, Cas had suspected that Dean loved him for he knew not how long.  But he knew it, truly knew it, the moment he saw a wave of Darkness sweep towards him and prepared to set himself aflame. It passed right through him. As though it did not even see him. As though he were part of it.

This realization hit him the same moment that the Darkness hit Elle.

It did not adhere to her as it had the other people and creatures he had seen in its thrall, enmeshing them in thin veins of black before slowly sinking in over hours and days. It seemed to slam into her all at once, a great upsurge of it that knocked her off of her feet, before boiling its way into her skin and disappearing. She went rigid, then completely limp, before Cas had finished turning around.

Dean, of course, was unaffected, as was Sam, and they took two separate courses of action as the Darkness sieved through them. Sam rushed towards the door with a bellow. Rowena stood, half-turned, with key in hand, watching the outcome of her command. Dean gave a shout and rushed towards Elle, crouching next to her and pulling her partway to his chest, like a ragdoll.

 _I should have shielded her,_ Cas thought, numbly, before turning his attention to Sam’s mad sprint.

But Sam was too late. Rowena was gone. The Book was gone. The door closed and dissolved back into faint chalk marks on the wall, where he beat his fists with such force that Cas felt the delicate phalanges crack from where he stood. Sam did not even seem to notice.

“ _Damn it_! Fuck!” Sam’s forehead came to rest against the wall, and his chest heaved.

For a moment, everything was still. Castiel thought distantly of those millions of years, long before the earth had existed, when he had waited to be called forth in his function, before he himself had, in essence, existed. He had not been a consciousness so much as the potential to be one, and he, like all angels, bore this memory-which-was-not-memory at the core of him. It was the blink of an eye really, the sliver of space between the inhale and the exhale, and then his name was called and he burst into being.

It was this not-memory that bubbled up now, unbidden,  in the breathless pause between the closing of the door and the collapsing of the world.

It was the chandelier that fell first. It sent a fountain of sparks up as it hit the floor.

“What the hell? What’s happening?” Dean asked. He had Elle in his arms, motionless and suddenly very small. Her warm brown skin had taken on a dull grey cast.  Was she breathing? Cas put his hand on her forehead, and attempted to wake her, heal her, release her soul, something, anything, but he was rebuffed. He felt an electric current hiss under the skin of his hand, and felt its echo jolt through his wings. What?

“I don’t know,” Sam said, looking out the window. “But I think we’re running out of time.” He pointed, and Cas saw the horizon slowly creeping black on all sides, a thin sliver like the graphite line of a pencil, but growing thicker as he watched. The Book, and Rowena’s power over it, had been the leash holding back the Darkness. It had just snapped. “Wake her up.”

“I can’t.”

“What? You’re an _angel,_ Castiel. Zap her awake!”

“Sam, I can’t. I’ve tried. It’s not affecting her like it does anyone else.”

“Damn it. Fine, call the archangels down, get everyone out of here. Now. I’m just going to have to do this from memory.”

“They’re coming,” Cas said, with his face still toward the window, but his attention elsewhere. “They’re still weak, but they’re coming. They’ve answered my summons. Just…start the spell. As soon as they materialize I’ll get everyone to safety.”

“Right.” Sam raked the hair back from his eyes and dug into the spell ingredients, moving with a calm determination that he probably did not feel. Cas noticed Sam’s mouth moving, silently, and for a moment thought it might be a prayer. No. He was repeating the spell instructions to himself in an obsessive litany. Cas had seen him do that from time to time when he was memorizing new things, before they had become ingrained in his memory. Sam had said it was a habit he had picked up while studying for his exams at Stanford. “Dean, help me. Look at this list and hand me the ingredients I need as I say the words written in the margins. I’m going to really need to concentrate here. Can you do that?”

In any other circumstance, Castiel would have expected a retort of debatable wit, but the gravity of the situation meant that Dean just nodded, and deposited Elle carefully on the rug.

“Keep working on her,” Sam ordered over his shoulder, as Dean took his place next to him by the long, wooden table.

“Sam, this is the longest spell I’ve ever seen,” Dean said, with a suggestion of panic in his voice.

“Yeah, well. Elle said she went over the top, remember? Each ingredient and incantation has a backup, sometimes two. She wanted to make sure it stuck. She says she’s a firm believer in the power of the failsafe. Still, I don’t want to miss anything. We have to get this right.”

They bent to their work, moving in an intense tandem, a kind of focused symmetry that reminded Cas of watching Lucifer and Michael as they operated within their shared vessel. But he could not stand there watching, all day, as much as he would have liked to (and how late the day was growing, how hopelessly late, the morning of the thirty ninth day since the rising of the Darkness).

He knelt beside Elle, placing his hands carefully against her heart, her forehead, her throat. The Darkness within her had turned her cold--he looked for a heat signature. He expected warmth and found an ice floe. He looked again for her soul, for some glimpse of it, and again he failed.  Only this time rather than the gentle blankness he had felt earlier, it crackled with the angry pebbled hiss of a radio tuned to dead air, a purdah not of veils but of electricity. Every tendril of grace he tried to give her was denied, retreating back into him with a disorienting jolt. But she was breathing. _She’s not dead_ , Cas thought, with only a modicum of relief, _But she is beyond my reach. I can’t find her. I don’t know where’s she’s gone._ This thought disturbed him on a level he could not quite understand. He kept trying. If only he could figure out what the warding was on her, if only he could remove it…

He continued on this way for some time. Castiel was  dimly aware of the creeping black beyond the tower, of the growing pressure of the archangels drawing nearer, of the spell’s many scents and tastes that filled the air, of Sam’s quiet voice made severe by the sharp edges of the dead language it required.

Then, quite suddenly, he felt the pressure in the room drop, as though a great storm had coalesced inside its walls. Sam stopped, mid-word; Dean held a small vial of brilliant purple powder at an angle, poised to sprinkle a few grains into the shivering surface of the liquid in the incantation bowl. Cas removed his stinging hand from Elle’s forehead and turned to see the wall where the chalk door had been drawn suddenly pulsing with light, the door itself solidifying into a new shape, a sharply pointed curve of iron, like a black fang.

Dean had retrieved his gun from the pile of weapons in the corner, and now stood with it trained on the smoking mouth of the entryway. It creaked open, pouring forth gold light that momentarily blinded them, but Cas could see, even though it was not a light he knew, and through the glow he saw a figure. It stood straight and proud, in a wide-legged battle stance, and as it removed its golden-scaled helmet he saw a cascade of fiery hair.

“Rowena!” Dean cried, shielding his eyes with one hand but holding his gun with the other.

“Wrong redhead, Dean. Or do we all look alike to you?”

“Charlie? _Charlie?_ ” Dean’s arm dropped to his side as though it had suddenly lost all feeling.

“Oh, my god,” Sam said, abandoning the incantation bowl.

“You really thought you’d seen the last of me?” She was smudged with soot, and she had a healing cut across the high line of her cheekbone, bisected with small, neat stitches. Her armor was gold, articulated like the scales of a great serpent, over which which she wore a cuirass of emerald green leather, emblazoned with a red poppy. By the looks of it, both she and her armor, had seen a long, hard campaign. But she beamed at them like a child.

Without a word, both brothers rushed towards her and wrapped her in a hug that would have crushed her, had she not been clad in mail. She made a small noise of surprise as the air was knocked out of her. Castiel hung back, unsure of whether or not he should intrude on the reunion, but Charlie turned her smile towards him when the Winchesters finally disentangled themselves from her. “You don’t get away that easy, Cas.” She stepped from the doorway and grabbed him before he could think of a reply. She smelled of fire and smoke and lightning and of old, old magic. But as far as he could tell she was herself, and he hugged her tighter.

“How...how are you…?” Dean asked, seeming to trip over his own tongue. “We, um, we gave you a hunter’s funeral, Charlie.”

“Did you? I suppose you didn’t put me in a longship with all of my treasures. By the way, I notice you haven’t commented on my _completely awesome Ozite armor_.”

“Charlie,” Sam said, and his face had fallen back into the familiar hard lines he’d been wearing for years. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but seriously, the way you...the way you died was not pretty. And you were definitely dead. How do we know you’re you?”

“Okay, okay, fair enough. Um. So, you remember how I ended up getting split into two parts of myself? Remember, Dark Me? Cruel, vindictive, but, you know, also kinda badass and with the confidence to wear leather pants and…”

“Charlie.”

“Sorry! So you remember that? Well, that spell is one of several that split the personality of a person. You know, not always into good and evil, sometimes into just...smaller pieces of the original. Like a Horcrux, except that the Horcrux doesn’t actually exist until the ‘original’ item, or, I mean, soul, gets killed. Then it gets kind of….pulled back to where you originally created the split.”

“What do you mean?” Cas asked, and he could see the way that Sam was rapidly losing patience, with the weight of the unfinished spell threatening to crush him.

“A save point,” Dean said, suddenly. “You mean like a save point in a video game.”

“Yes!” Charlie said, pointing enthusiastically. “Just like that. A save point! When I realized what I was up against with the Stynes, I knew I was gonna end up dead. I knew they’d never stop hunting me. So I went back to Oz and made myself a save point. Split myself off, leave a, you know, sort of ‘blank Charlie’ back in Oz, just waiting to be rebooted . The minute I died here, I woke up back in Oz. It did kind of make me a bit stupider in this dimension though, I gotta say. Well, I knew that was one of the potential side effects.”

They gaped at her, and she widened her eyes. “Guys, seriously, you really think I’d let some creepy Nazi dude corner me in a motel bathroom and I _wouldn’t_ climb out the window? Come on.”

“Holy shit,” Sam said, and wrapped her in another hug.

“Charlie that’s...I’m so glad.” Cas said, and Dean looked at him as his voice caught a little. She smiled again, but then caught sight of Elle lying cold on the floor, and her smile fell.

“What happened to your friend?” Charlie asked, going over to her and kneeling down. Her hair had grown long and it tumbled over her shoulder, bound up in a metal and leather coronet on her head.

“The Darkness hit her.”

“The...Darkness? The British metal band?”

“No,” Dean said, uncomfortably, “Charlie, listen, it’s a long story and we haven’t got much time, but we were able to remove the Mark. Unfortunately it had some major consequences.”

She rolled her eyes. “ _Seriously?_ God, you guys. Why are you always in at the deep end? W T actual F.”

“We know,” Sam said quietly. “But we’re doing a spell right now to drive it back, we can fix it. We will fix it.”

“Good,” Charlie said, still looking at Elle. She put her hand on Elle’s forehead and then grimaced. “Jesus, she’s lit up like a Christmas tree.” She shook her hand out as though it had been burned. “But she’s alive. I don’t have any healing philters left or I’d give you one. I’m sorry.” Charlie stood, her armor clanking as she moved. “But I can give you something else.” She walked back over to the door, which was open onto the fields of Oz. They did not seem to be near the Emerald City, but Cas noticed the faint trail of distant fires coming from the hills.

Charlie leaned through the door and let out an ear-splitting whistle. There was a great roaring rush of wind, and a sound Castiel immediately recognized as giant wings. Angels was his first thought, but the shadow that spread across the ground through the door put lie to that.

“Is that...a dragon?” Dean asked.

“Yep! Told you I’d ridden a dragon, right?” Charlie reached through the door and pulled on a heavy chain.

“That’s...so fucking awesome.”

“I know, right?” She whistled again, and the wingbeats began again, stirring up a great storm of dust and leaves as they retreated. Charlie pulled on the chain, and it gave a small irritated noise of complaint, before revealing Rowena, clapped hand and foot in iron, with her mouth taped shut. “Sorry boys, but we’re all full up with wicked witches in Oz. We don’t want one of yours.” She grinned. “I hope you appreciate this, bitches, because it was a month-long campaign to bring this one down, and she did not go quietly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _All I'm getting from you is colors._   
>  _I realize the end of this work is basically a French farce with lots of bloodshed and magic, but then, that's just...how I roll._   
>  _This is probably rank sentimentalism, but I had to bring her back, guys. I had to. I hope you don't mind. :S_


	17. Judgement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello, boys.

Dean’s brain was clearly still reeling from the double-dose of the spell he’d caught. He swore he heard it make a pained _click-click-whir_ noise as he tried to absorb this most recent burst of information, in addition to the other world-shifting events that had happened in the last few minutes.

“A month? Charlie, she stepped through that door half an hour ago!” Sam said, looking between the two women as though he were in need of a very stiff drink. The door in question had slowly swung itself closed with a well-oiled whisper.

“Really? Well, like I said, time flows differently in Oz. She showed up just over a month ago and started building an army almost immediately. Dudes, she is scary powerful. I mean, you know, in general, but especially in Oz. A witch like that in one of the major fairy realms? Forget it. You do not _wanna_ go there. She tried to turn me into an actual chipmunk. A chipmunk. I mean, thank god that didn’t take, though I did kinda crave sunflower seeds like crazy there for a while.” She shook her head. “Fortunately, I knew something was up before she arrived.” She turned to Rowena then, with a smirk. “All those spells you used to try and hack your way in, none of them worked, did they?  But boy, they sure gave me the heads up. So hey, Team Oz: one, Team Witch: zero.” Rowena glared at her and Dean suddenly understood why Charlie had taken pains to gag her. Any incantation that came from a look like that was sure to kill.

“What about the Book?” Cas asked, looking out the window, where the horizon continued to darken like a bruise. Occasionally black ribbons of smoke shot into the sky, which was growing dim, despite the rising sun. Dean followed his gaze. How long before the whole sky was devoured? And everything under it?

But it seemed, he thought, to slow a little, retreating back a fraction, almost like it was flinching away, before inching forward. Was he imagining it?

“Oh,” Charlie said, quietly, as she, too, turned her attention to the seaswell of Darkness. “Uh. Well. I _have_ it.” She reached into the battered leather pouch she wore at her side. “Just not...all of it.” She pulled out a lump of charred, leathery material.

“Oh,” Sam said, chewing at his lip and grabbing Rowena’s chain, so that all the slack was removed.

“It looks like the mere presence of the Book has a retarding effect on the Darkness,” Cas pointed out, nodding towards the window. So Dean wasn’t imagining things. “But since it’s so badly damaged, it doesn’t seem to be holding it back the way it did before. It’ll buy us some time, but how much, I couldn’t say.”

“Sorry, guys. Dragons,” Charlie said, with an apologetic twist of the mouth.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll still do the spell.” He patted Elle’s canvas bag, which he had slung over his shoulder while they talked. “Listen, Charlie, I’m so glad to see you, seriously, but we’re going to need you to head back to Oz now, okay? This spell is...it’s old-school. Biblical old-school. You’ve already died for us once, I’m not standing by and letting you die again.”

“Wait, what? But what about you?” she asked, furrowing her brow and smoothing down the golden scales of her helmet. One was loose, and she pulled at it, absently, looking at Dean.

“We’ve got angels on stand-by,” Dean said, patting her shoulder. “But it’s really best if you’re not here for this. It’s uh, it’s the nuclear option.”

“Angels? That’s cool, I don’t mind hitching a ride with angels. I mean, I know they’re kind of dicks, generally, but still, awesome. Um. No offence.”

“None taken,” Cas said, with a tiny shrug, still watching the Darkness as it lapped closer, like a black ocean eating at the shore.

“No. Not…not regular angels,” Sam said, chagrined. “Archangels.”

“I thought they were all dead!”

“Lucifer and Michael survived, because they were in the Cage,” Cas said, turning back to Charlie now. “But Sam and Dean are right. Charlie, you’ve already died for this family once, in large part due to my carelessness. It would be reckless of us to risk your life unnecessarily again.”

“Wait, back up. You...you’ve got, the Apocalypse twins on stand-by?”

“That’s _exactly_ what I said!” Dean exclaimed, pointing at her. “But, uh, yeah. Basically. Lucifer and Michael, while weapons-grade douchebags, are also really useful in this whole ‘pre-Biblical-doom’ situation.”

“Properly restrained by a binding contract, of course,” Cas hastened to add, seeing her already-pale skin turn several shades paler.

“Oh, of...course. Yeah. Totally.”

“Yeah. But listen, kiddo, Sam’s right. We’ve got to do this spell, and then things are going to get real intense, real fast. And I’m sorry, but while you’re clearly a major badass in Oz, I don’t trust the Devil with your safety, deal or no deal.”

Charlie nodded, drawing her brows together, then let out a heavy sigh. “Right, okay. Okay, yeah. Normally I’d tell you not to tell me what to do, but, given how things tend to work out of me when we all hang out together during a crisis, I might actually take your advice for once.” She looked at them all, then at Rowena. “What are you gonna do with her?” At that, Rowena turned to look at them, too, and if Dean didn’t know better, he’d have been taken in by her doe eyes, which now wore a pleading look, and her tiny stature. But then he thought of Cas, who’d spent so much of his life as a weapon under the control of those more powerful than him. The vision of those stark red tear tracks, marring that well-loved face, reminded Dean that she’d treated him exactly the same. And the others: that girl who’d been forced into a brothel by demons, those dumb kids at Donny’s bar, and who knew how many more. He clenched his jaw and unclenched his fists. He forced himself to breathe.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll think of something appropriate.”

At that, Rowena’s eyes widened even further and her head seemed to fall back as though she’d been struck. Dean looked down at his own hand, on instinct, but it had not moved. He looked back at Rowena and noticed that her eyes had gone...they had gone red. They had gone _red_. Sam and Charlie were saying something, now, about why Charlie needed to get back, something about overseeing peace talks and not leaving Dorothy hanging, and neither was paying attention.

“Sam,” Dean said, hitting Sam’s arm with the back of his hand. “Sam, look.”

“What?”

“Look.” He pointed, and now all of them turned to look at Rowena, who was looking hard at them through her blood-red eyes.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Sam gasped. “She’s got crossroads demon eyes.”

At that, Rowena began nodding and talking rapidly, but the words were muffled by the gag. They all stared at her, open-mouthed, for a moment, and she made an exasperated motion with her head and stared at Cas, raising her eyebrows.

“Remove the gag,” Cas said, suddenly.

“What?” Dean asked. “Cas, no, she’ll just try and curse us or something.”

“She’s in irons, Dean. She’s depowered. And anyway, I don’t think that’s Rowena.” He crossed over to her in two long strides and yanked the cloth free. It gave a sticky hiss as the adhesive pulled away.

Rowena grimaced at that and shook her head as she worked her jaw back and forth.

Then she said: “Hello, boys.”

“ _Crowley_?” Sam asked, momentarily loosening his grip on the chain in his shock, before snapping it back towards him.

“Oof,” Crowely said, indignant. “No need for that, Moose.”

“Wait, the...King of Hell?” Charlie asked, reaching towards her belt as though to draw the curved, claw-like short sword that she carried there. She stopped herself, looking at Dean.

“In the flesh,” Crowley said, with a small smirk. “Well, in...my mother’s flesh. You know what, that came out wrong. Forget I said it. Yes, it’s me.”

“That’s impossible. I killed you myself.”

“You’ve always been such a cocky bastard, Castiel. It’s one the few traits of yours that I admire.” Crowley jerked his arms a little, and Sam let out a link or two in the chain. “But yes, you did. Or, you mostly did. I managed to partially smoke out before you knifed me right in the old ticker. You did say you were going to be the one to carve my heart out, so, kudos to you.” For a moment the red flickered, and Rowena’s eyes turned their normal shade again. She took a ragged breath, then bit off a scream as the red returned. “Ugh. Like I said, I partially vacated my meatsuit. I was mostly dead, I still had a little juice left. I can’t quite possess people to the extent I used to, alas. Especially not this one. So I’ve been biding my time for when the Light Brigade inevitably showed up.  And here you are!” He shook his head sharply. “Not now, mother. I’m running the show, at last.”

“What do you want, Crowley?” Sam asked, with a grim, stony look. He was very clearly toying with the idea of running them both through with Ruby’s knife, which he had put back into his belt.

“I want you to spare her life.”

“What, you ride around in her head for a while and suddenly you’ve found compassion for her?” Dean asked, aghast. “She had Cas _kill_ you. And I remember what you said to me the last time we met up for a drink!” The last part of the sentence was out before he’d thought it through, and he felt himself, horribly, inevitably, begin to blush. But no one seemed to notice.

“What? God, no. I hate the bitch. You should definitely punish her. I merely said you shouldn’t kill her. Death’s cheap and easily cheatable. I had something a little more extravagant in mind.”

“What do you mean?” Charlie asked.

“Come on, _think_ , girl. What’s the worst thing you can do to a witch who wants power? You live in a land that’s riddled with them. What’s a fate worse than death?”

Charlie blinked at him for a moment, and then an idea clearly hit her, lighting her face like a sunrise. “Wait. You mean...strip her of her power? Like in _The Marvelous Land of Oz_! I remember Dorothy mentioning something about that. Although she said it came with, uh, pretty nasty side effects. Something about eyes melting out of skulls and...other things.”

“She can be taught!” Crowley said, but at the suggestion Rowena clearly began fighting him for control again, for he started to grimace and shudder as though he were in the grip of a terrible pain. “Would you _stop_.”

“That’s a great idea, bucko,” Charlie said, and she curled her lip slightly at his tone. “Except that no one in Oz knows how to make that potion anymore, and I am sure as hell not dragging her anyway near the Emerald City library to try and figure it out.”

“What?” Crowley gasped, coming back to himself. “The state of the education system in Oz must be appalling. There’s got to be something you can do.”

“Dean,” Sam said, quietly, leaning in to speak directly into his ear. “Remember when Balthazar zapped us to that weird alternate dimension where they made that show about our lives?”

“Ugh, I’d successfully forgotten it until now, so thanks Sam.”

“Wait, _what_?” Charlie asked, turning to them. “You never told me this!”

“Oh god, it is not worth telling,” Dean said, with a shudder. “One of Cas’ war buddies magicked us to some bizarro world where we were actors on some TV show playing...well, us. It was...not fun. Hell, the guy playing Cas ended up getting stabbed to death.”

“What?” Cas asked looking more startled than he had in a long time.

“Yeah he…” Sam began, but Dean interrupted.

“He got killed because...because that fucking hitman angel needed to send out a call, and there was no…there was no supernatural shit in that world.” The idea slowly worked its way into the gummed-up gears of his brain, suddenly sparking bright and fast. “Nothing to make a connection.”

“Exactly, Dean! No supernatural shit. No demons, no angels, _no magic of any kind_.”

“Holy shit, you’re right!” But then, he remembered the list of spell ingredients involved, and the newly-kindled hope in his chest guttered out. “But we need the bones of a lesser saint and a whole bunch of other crap. So. No dice.”

“Wait, you mean a trans-dimensional summoning sigil?” Cas asked, with a squint so severe that Dean wondered how he could see. “ _That’s_ where Balthazar sent you? That is...not even remotely what he told me.” He looked down, thoughtful. “He always was an excellent liar.”

“Yeah, I guess. Well, we don’t have any of that stuff. So I guess we’ll just have to gank you both. Sorry, Crowley.” And the strange thing was, he did feel sorry about it, and he hated himself for it.

“Wait! Tell me what you need first. She’s got an entire arcane library in this place. I can probably whip it up for you in five minutes.”

Dean looked between Sam, Cas, and Charlie.

“Kill them,” Sam said.

“Fine with me,” Cas agreed.

“Dean, come on, even after all we’ve been through?”

“Don’t kill them,” Charlie said, quietly.

“What?” Cas asked,  and the disappointment was evident in his voice. “Why not?”

“Because killing people? When it becomes the easy option? That’s when you need to worry. Come on, you should know this.”

“But they deserve it,” Dean said, and secretly cringed at the sullen note in his voice.

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”

“Seriously, Charlie? Tolkien?”

“There’s always time for Tolkien, Dean. Listen, I’ve...done things in the past month, and I did things back when I was split in two, that have made it very hard for me to look at myself in the mirror anymore. I know you know what that’s like, all of you. So, please. Listen to me. Don’t kill them.”

“Alright, fine,” Dean sighed.

“Oh thank god,” Crowley said. “Now, give me the ingredients list. She ransacked several Men of Letters strongholds before she got obsessed with this Oz idea. It’s like fucking Diagon Alley in the cellar of this place, only with less whimsy and more eldritch terror.”

Dean grabbed a sheet of paper from the back of Elle’s book and began jotting down the spell ingredients, willing his slowly-waking mind to focus. Fatigue and hunger, which were normally masked by adrenaline, were also making their presence known, and that slowed him down further. His brows drew together, as though pulled by a taut thread, and he made himself focus. _I should get Cas to check my work,_ he thought.

But Cas was otherwise occupied, he could hear. “You’ve got approximately twenty six minutes before some of my big brothers arrive,” Cas said, in a way that suggested he would like nothing more than to take unilateral action by way of his blade. “And if you’re not gone by then, I’m going to let them off leash and set them on you, regardless of the consensus. Do you understand?”

“Always go straight for the rough stuff, don’t you, Castiel? Dean certainly has a type. So many things make sense now.”

Dean jerked halfway upright at that. He nearly snapped the lead of the pencil stub he was using, feeling Crowley’s gaze prickle on the back of his neck. He resolutely avoided looking at anyone. He counted to ten, and then turned around with the finished list, shoving it into Crowley’s hands. “Here’s your damn list. You may have twenty six minutes until the archangels get here, but you’ve got ten before I say ‘fuck it’ and stab you and mommy dearest myself.”

“I’ll be back in nine.”

“Wait,” Sam said, pulling on the chain. “How do we know you won’t just smoke out?”

“I won’t. I would’ve done it already if was planning on it. But you can put that gag back on me if you want. I can’t promise you I won’t enjoy it, though.” He winked, and then pulled sharply at the chain that Sam still held. “Drop it, Moose. But leave them on. The iron suppresses her enough that I’m better able to stay in the driver’s seat, even though it is...really rather unpleasant.” He pulled one of the manacles slightly, revealing an angry raw patch of skin, where the iron had burned him. He took a deep breath, preparing himself. “This is going to hurt like hell. Hey ho, away we go! Back in a few.” Sam dropped the chain, and Crowley disappeared.

“Charlie, look, I’m sorry, but we’re kind of running out of time here,” Sam said, the minute Crowley was gone, directing her attention to the window. The full weight of the situation seemed to hit her at once, as she looked back and forth between the rising dark tide and Elle’s unconscious form on the floor. Cas had returned to his spot next to Elle, again attempting to wake her with his laying-on-of-hands routine. Each time he did, however, Dean noticed that he blinked and drew back slightly, as if she was repelling him.

“Yikes, okay. I get it. I do. And anyway, there are those peace talks and rebuilding that I need to oversee now. The less-fun part of being the new Empress of Oz.” She nodded, then hugged them each again in turn, stooping awkwardly over Cas to wrap her arms around his back. She turned back to the iron door she had called forth and began to slip her helmet back onto her head. She stopped halfway and turned back to them. “Listen, boys, when you...when you get all this sorted out, come see me in Oz, okay? I...I miss you. There isn’t much left for me here on earth, but in there? Well. I’d really like to show you what it is I’ve been up to. And Dorothy would like to see you, too.” She handed Sam the Key to Oz that Rowena had worn, and then, after a moment’s thought, plucked the loose golden scale from her helmet and handed it to Dean. “When you get there, go straight to the Emerald City and ask for me. If anyone gives you any trouble, you show them that. They’ll know what it means.” She retrieved her own Key and opened the door.

It was now full night in Oz.  Dean was confronted with a great, gemmed wheel of unknown constellations, stretching as far as he could see, and in the distance a silvery-green countryside, full of dim and unguessed loveliness. He felt a strange ache burgeon somewhere within him. _One of the fairy realms_ , he remembered. One of the fairy realms, calling to one of the firstborn.

“Sure, Charlie,” Sam said, clapping her on the back with a smile that would convince anyone except Dean. “You bet. Once we fix this whole Darkness thing, you’ll have to give us the grand tour.”

Charlie smiled at them all then, a little sadly, and then placed her helmet back on her head. “Well, then. I’ll see you when I see you. Peace out, bitches.” She stepped through the door, and moonlight glinted off the gold in her armor, giving her the appearance of a gilded creature, fierce and lovely, a knight or a queen. _Or both_ , Dean thought. _Both. I’m glad that, out of all of us, she’s the one who made it._

The door closed and dissolved to chalk lines once more. The room suddenly seemed very quiet and empty.

“Any luck with her?” Dean asked of Cas, trying to make his voice, which had grown inexplicably rough, sound normal.

“No,” Cas said, harshly. He shook his hand, as though it had fallen asleep and was now waking up again. “She’s...she’s rejecting all my attempts. Her body refuses to let me touch her soul at all. If I could just figure out what the damn warding on her is...but I don’t want to cut her open to get a look at her ribs in case I can’t heal her again.”

“Yeah, don’t do that,” Dean said.

There was the sound like a flashbulb behind them, and then a faint smell of sulfur. They turned, to see Crowley, holding a small bowl laden with various magical items, appear besides the still-unconscious Metatron. ( _Damn, Cas wasn’t lying when he said he was gonna knock him out,_ Dean thought absently.)

“See, back in eight and a half minutes,” Crowley said, setting the last item, a small bone from who-knew-what part of god-knew-who’s body, on the table. “I would have been quicker, but she kept trying to overpower me while we were down there. It was a pretty close one.” He pushed the hair from his eyes, the chain rattling loudly as he did so. “Right, Cas, draw the sigil, seeing as it’s one of your little angel toys. Dean, you seem to know this spell--I always said you were more than just a pretty face. Sam, you take these off. The Key to Oz will work.”

“Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Because you’re sending us to a world without any magic, idiot. There’s no need for them. We’re going to show up somewhere random, and people are going to see a tiny Scottish woman in an evening gown and heavy S&M gear wandering around talking to herself. I’m sorry, boys, but I don’t feel like ending up in a nuthouse on my first day.”

“Wait, you’re going, too?” Sam asked. “But why? You’ll be just as cut off as she is.”

“You want me to smoke out and take another meatsuit? Samantha, I’m touched.”

“No, of course not, but…”

“Look boys,” Crowley said, and his tone was soft and serious, without a hint of its usual smirk, and again Dean felt an odd mix of emotions that made him uneasy. “I’m...tired. I wasn’t lying when I said that Cas nearly killed me. I’m half the demon I used to be. Come on, look at me. I can barely keep control of _one person_. I can’t hope to keep control of _Hell_ in this state. They’ll fall on me like rabid dogs. This way at least, I get to spend a little quality time with my dear, dear old mother. Make up for all that lost time. And, you know, torment her soul. So, you know, not an ideal situation for me, but better than the alternative.” He paused, as though gathering his thoughts. “Plus, well, seeing as this is goodbye, I guess I can admit that I’ve grown to rather like this sick, sad world, and I’d rather not see it destroyed. Especially not by my own mother. So get on with it before the Apocalypse twins get here.”

“Right. Right, okay,” Dean said. He closed his eyes and ran through the spell. Cas had drifted over to watch him, and laid a hand, lightly on the small of Dean’s back, looking over his shoulder has he worked. Dean felt the bloom of warmth from Cas’ body press against his tense muscles, and he relaxed slightly.

“You only need a few grains of that, Dean,” Cas said, and his voice was a quiet reassurance, a comfort in the multitude of thoughts within him. Cas had reached out and steadied Dean’s hand, which he belatedly realized had begun to display a fine tremor, as he worked. “There. That should do it.”

“All set?” Crowley asked, watching the proceedings with a meticulously neutral face. “Alright, then.” He held out his wrists again, and this time Sam gave a terse nod, before undoing the locks. They fell to the floor with a reverberating clank. The ankle cuffs followed. “Ah, that’s better,” Crowley sighed, rubbing the angry red wheals on each wrist. He stepped into the middle of the room and gestured to Cas. “Maestro, if you don’t mind.”  
Cas stepped over to the wall next to Crowley  and sliced his own arm in one clean, efficient pass, deep enough that Dean winced. But Cas’ face was blank and determined, as though the pain did not register. Blood poured in rivulets down to his elbow and made quiet splattering noises on as drops fell to the floor, but Cas was as focused as ever on his work. He drew the activating circle in two long, steady strokes, then began to draw the arrow that made up the active part of the sigil.

Suddenly, however, Crowley went rigid next to him and let out a screech that...didn’t sound much like Crowley at all.

Rowena flung herself at Cas, all claws and flying hair, like a hellcat set loose. “You _dare_ try and banish me? _You dare_?”  
They rushed towards the fray, where Rowena had managed to get a vicious swipe in across Cas’ face, but she turned to them, speaking a word that smelled of ice and smoke, and they stumbled backwards. Her head snapped back, and Dean was afraid it had all been a trick, Crowley was going to smoke out after all, they were screwed…

But then, chest heaving, she stood again and, a voice that was not hers said: “I’m afraid not, mother.” Crowley dragged himself, with great difficulty, back to the sigil, shuddering as though being pushed by a great gale the whole way. He gritted his teeth and held up his hand, incarnadine with angel blood, and drew the last element of the sigil. It began to glow, black-orange like an ember.

Crowley nodded. “Well, thanks for the memories.”

“Hey, Crowley,” Dean said, surprising himself. “Thanks.”

Crowley looked at him then, and smiled through bloody teeth. "Goodbye, boys.”

The wall seemed to explode, splintering into a million pieces, and Crowley was yanked backwards. The last view they had of him was the soles of his small, leather-soled shoes and the fluttering hem of his dark gown, disappearing into light.

Dean had just one moment to catch his breath, before the room began to disintegrate  around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I told you this was essentially a bloody, magic-filled French farce, what with summoning spells and doors and everyone being possessed. It's patently ridiculous, but hey. I wanted to give people a proper send off that DIDN'T include 'just kill the bitch'._   
>  _Things are...a little weird at the minute. There are two more chapters to go and I'll get them up when I can, but bear with me._   
>  _I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions or comments, let me know._


	18. The Hermit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, god, here comes the reckoning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I have written roughly six iterations of this, and this is the one I chose to put in. Quite a lot happens, so it is on the long side. I hope you enjoy._

The detente from Charlie’s departure seemed to expand like a soap bubble, a residue of fairy magic in hazy blue and gold. Then it burst.

It was the chandelier that did it. As Dean turned back from the chalk-smudged wall, he noticed a distinct lack of spilled candle wax on the floor. And a distinct lack of candles, and wooden candlebeams. In fact, there was no sign of the fallen light fixture whatsoever. It had simply...vanished.

“Wait, what happened to the chandelier thing?” Dean asked, pointing to the empty space on the floor as though it had tricked him.

“What?” Sam asked, leaning over the abandoned spell and eyeing the contents of the bowl balefully. “We’ll need to start this over, Dean. I don’t want to take any chances. Cas, what’s the ETA on…”

“The chandelier!” Dean exclaimed, still pointing. “The one that fell when Rowena went through the door to Oz. It was there, and now it’s gone!”

Sam looked over his shoulder at last, to where Dean was pointing, and frowned. “Huh. Weird. Some leftover Oz magic, maybe? Listen, Dean, I don’t know if resuming this spell after such a long interruption will cause any problems, but we can’t risk it. We need to start over from scratch.”

“Yeah, right. Right,” Dean said, still staring at the empty space on the floor. “Okay, let’s...let’s do that.” He took up his old place, across from Sam, feeling vaguely unsettled. Sam poured the old spell into an empty bottle, wiped out the bowl, and handed Dean the book with Elle’s notes in it again.

“Cas, what’s the ETA on the archangels?” Sam asked, resting his hand on the jar holding the first ingredient (‘Leaf of the wild oak, sacred to Janus,’ Dean read). “I, uh, I want to make sure we get the timing right, so that you guys can get out of here okay before I...complete this thing.”

“Not long,” Cas said, looking troubled—though, Dean had to admit, looking troubled was Cas’ default setting. “Half an hour? An hour, at most? I lied to Crowley about the exact timing, but it won’t be long. A banishing sigil would weaken a rank-and-file angel for days. Weeks, even. You remember how badly I was knocked back, and I was at full power, then.” He stopped this train of thought with a quirk of his mouth. “They’ve only been gone one night, and they’re already coming back. I suspect their righteous indignation has played a part in the speed of their recovery. I suppose it had to be good for something.”

“Will _they_ be at full power when they get here?” Sam asked, sharply.

“Well, no,” Cas said, clearing his throat with a rueful look, “A banishing sigil will temporarily extinguish the grace of _any_ kind of Heavenly creature, Sam, even one as powerful as an archangel. But...they’ll be strong enough to carry a few humans. You’re not particularly heavy, as a species,” he added hastily, seeing the way Sam’s eyes narrowed.

“I guess that’s the best we can hope for,” Dean said, with a sudden upsurge of emotions crowding his throat. An hour, at most. He looked around the room, at Sam’s serious face and stooped shoulders, as he bent to his work on the spell; at Cas’ as he bent to his, over Elle’s body. For a moment, he nearly came unmoored. He drew in a breath, attempting to say something that was not goodbye, but nothing came. He closed his mouth.

“Alright,” Sam was saying, and Dean made himself concentrate, with middling success. “Let’s try again. Now, when I start it this time, try to…”

But here, one of the great tapestries—this one showing a long haired knight might have been a girl (Dean wasn’t sure) spearing the side of a rather dog-like dragon—fell to the floor.

“Seriously,” Dean said, whipping his head around at the noise. “Sam, what the hell? First the chandelier, now these things are falling off the wall? This can’t be Oz magic. The door’s completely gone!”

“I...don’t know,” Sam said, for the first time seeming to realize that something about this was amiss. He stood up straight, watching the fallen tapestry as though it might spontaneously burst into flames. “Shoddy construction?” he offered, spreading his palms and looking hopefully at Dean.

“I guess they don’t make castles like they used to.”

“They don’t make castles like this at _all,_ ” Cas said, on his feet suddenly. “Remember what Rowena said? That she was the only thing holding this place together? Of course. This entire building is glamoured to be habitable.” He turned in a circle where he stood, with the distant look in his eye that Dean associated with unseen things. “It’s actually just the shell of a castle. She tied the spell to her presence. As long as she was within a hundred miles of this place, it would stand. But now…”

“Now we’ve pushed her into some other dimension,” Dean said, feeling his stomach drop to the vicinity of his knees.

“Exactly,” Cas said, still wearing that unfocused but intense look. Dean wondered if he was seeing with his human eyes at all. “I can see it unraveling, now that I look. A glamour is...well, imagine a woven cloth, draped across reality. The threads are being pulled out, one by one. I’m a fool for not figuring it out sooner. I'm sorry. ”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean said, pressing the palms of his hands into his tired eyes.

“How long do we have?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know,” Cas admitted. “Long enough to do the spell, I think.”

“Get her out of here,” Sam said, jerking his head towards Elle. “Put her on the ground floor or something, somewhere safe, somewhere they can still grab her on the way out. Send up another call and tell them to get their asses here _now_ , ‘extinguished grace’ or not. They’re archangels, they need to act like it. Summon them with a sigil if you have to. I don’t care, but get them here.”

Dean saw Cas nod, and then lift Elle into a fireman’s carry as though she weighed no more than a bird, or a small child. He made his way down the stairs, and disappeared from view in stages: the patent shine of his shoes, then the tan column of his coat, and lastly the dark crown of his head. Dean turned his attention to the tapestry, and gasped a little when he noticed that it now wavered between a solid and transparent state, as though it was slowly dissolving in front of his eyes.

He turned back to Sam, who was staring at him. “Dean, focus.”

“Right,” Dean said. “Right.”

They began again, this time with a clammy, breathless sense of urgency as reality asserted itself by its undoing. There was a tide of Darkness eating at the horizon, the building they were in was slowly dismantling itself, and their ride out of here was still half an hour away. _Great_ , Dean thought, _Fucking awesome. Wouldn’t want it to be easy, or anything._

Dean hadn’t been lying, before. This was easily the longest spell he had ever seen. It combined several different schools of magic and several different languages, each one a slight variation on the other. If one part of the spell didn’t take, then there was another, similar part that would. Sam said that Elle believed in the power of the failsafe, and he could see that it was true. She had back-up bottles of every ingredient in that bag, boxes of the pills she had given them, and books full of notes. She even had a box of Twinkies stashed in there, in case anyone got peckish while practicing the arcane arts. He wondered what it was that she had done in her past life that had required that level of meticulous, nigh-obsessive preparation.

Dean tried not to let the complexity of what they were doing sway him towards fear. Sam may have been the bookish brother, but Dean knew enough of practical magic to see that the parts of the spell fitted together neatly with the incantation, like small, precise cogs inside an intricate piece of machinery. _It’s just equations_ , he remembered _._ _It’s just fitting things together. It’s engineering_. _It’s like fixing a car_. And the spell unfolded its many-petaled beauty like clockwork to him as he read through it, handing over ingredient after ingredient as Sam spoke the words.

Dean became aware of Cas’ return, not because Cas had spoken, or made any noise as he ascended the stairs, but because he couldn’t _not_ be aware of Cas’ presence. It changed the pressure in the room, a tiny aberration in the weather between them. He sensed Cas like distant lightning on a mountain, or the promise of rain. He also became aware that room itself was beginning to fall apart faster as they worked. First another tapestry (this one bearing a unicorn hemmed in by huntsmen’s steel), then a wall sconce, then the great, heavy mantelpiece above the hearth, which landed with a splintering crash.

Sam’s voice did not waver, and Dean’s hand did not shake.

Finally, they reached the last two steps of the spell. And here they paused. An overhead beam creaked ominously, and a panel of stained glass fell from its pane and shattered into a million jewel-bright shards.

“Cas?”

“Any minute now. I can feel them. They’re...it’s quite uncomfortable, when they descend like this.” As he spoke the wind began to howl as the failing beam opened a hole in the ceiling. The billowing waves of Darkness seemed illuminated, like the wings of some great beast, as bolts of lightning made contact. “Yes,” Cas nodded, and his eyes were suddenly bloodshot, for a reason Dean couldn’t discern. “Yes, they’re going for Elle now. I put up a beacon next to her.” He turned to them. “Keep going.”

Sam nodded, jumping slightly as the beam finally gave, and a pile of pink-tinged rocks followed after. Elle had been lying there not ten minutes before.

“This is the long part,” Sam yelled, over the ever-increasing wind. His hair whipped his eyes, but he pressed on, speaking with the perfect pronunciation that had saved Dean’s life on more than one occasion. Dean poured in the powdered bone of a sphinx, and the thick gold liquid in the bowl began to emit a single ray of light. It grew in brightness until both had to hold their hands in front of their eyes. Dean turned his face away, and the image of Castiel leaping forward with a look of pure, predatory rage on his face was seared into his retinas. He expected to feel a bone-shattering thud, but instead Cas stepped on and off of the table in one move, coat and tie fluttering like banners in the breeze, before crashing into something behind Sam.

Dean blinked, trying to understand what he was seeing.

 _Someone, not something_. It was Metatron, making a break for it. The chair, and the ties holding him to it, had clearly disintegrated during all the confusion, and none of them had noticed. How long had he been awake, waiting for his chance?

The wind wailed now, as the power of the archangels butted up against that of the Darkness, two cataclysms colliding around them. Dean looked to where Cas had Metatron pinned, but could not hear what they were saying to each other. Cas had his blade poised over Metatron’s heart, and Dean waited for the killing blow, waited for Cas to sink his whole weight into it and drive the point into the stone floor. But then, Cas sat back on his heels and looked over his shoulder. Dean followed the direction of his gaze, and there, amongst the wreckage of the castle, were the archangels. They held Elle like a doll, by her shoulder, and watched the proceedings with a look that had reduced entire civilizations to dust.

“DEAN!” Sam yelled, having finished the incantation. He held the tip of Ruby’s knife to his palm, but he did not apply any pressure. “This is the last part! This is it! Go!”

Dean’s mouth went completely dry, and, not for the first instance, time ceased to function in its prescribed way. He felt himself nod, slowly, at Sam, in a moment that seemed to last forever; he saw Cas, behind Sam, pushing Metatron roughly to the table and holding out his blade, and it felt as though he was watching a movie on faded old film stock. He could not hear what Cas was yelling. There seemed to be only the wind, an endless sob in his ears. He jumped when he felt a hand, strong and sharp as a claw, land on his shoulder, and saw that it was Lucifer, come to save him. He felt a great wave of pressure that crested and subsided in the space of a breath, and his heart seized momentarily within his chest. He was surrounded by the shadows of wings. The wind died away completely. He looked, wide-eyed, between Cas (now holding Metatron by the throat so that he could not speak) and Sam, whose grip on the blade had not lessened.

“Cas, what…” Dean heard Sam begin to ask.

“It needs human blood, Sam.”

“I know!” Sam said, sounding utterly confused. “What do you think I’m…”

“ _Human blood,_ ” Cas repeated, as though it explained everything, and rounded viciously on Lucifer and Michael. He gave some sort of command, that, in the serrated language of Heaven, almost drew blood on its own. Lucifer reached across the table with the shadow of his wing and wrapped it around Sam’s back. Cas grabbed the knife from Sam’s hand in a move that was too fast for the human eye to follow.

“Cas, _no_ , what are you doing? The spell’s not done! Let me do this, you son of a bitch. Cas? _Castiel_ , tell them to let me go!”

“I’m sorry, Sam, but no.”

The archangels drew their wings back and up, lifting Sam across the table as though he were a toy. In the instant between the resurgence of the wind and the downbeat of the wings, he heard Cas growl to Metatron: “Here’s your redemption arc, you little bastard.”

Dean took a breath, and suddenly they were on a hill, which rose above a copse of ash and birch trees. He felt his body coalesce around him as they came back to earth, and this time he could not keep from retching. This was one of the rare occasions that he was glad there was nothing in his stomach. For a moment there was no light at all—the very sun seemed to have been swallowed up. Then, many miles in the distance, there was a great beacon of light, which turned the nighted day dazzlingly bright. The sky and earth bleached white as old bone. Dean dropped face down in an attempt to spare his eyes. Blindly, his hand groped around for anyone he could find, and landed Sam’s boot, then his calf. He hazarded a glance up through barely-open eyes and saw that Sam had curled in on himself, shielding his head and neck with his arms. The pillar of flame suddenly ended and spread like heat lightning, flickering across the darkened sky.

For a few moments, Dean was unsure if the silence was, in fact, silence, or if he had gone deaf from the explosion. “Sam?” he called, or thought he called, because he could not hear anything, and tugged on the hem of Sam’s jeans. He crawled forward on his elbows, until he was level with Sam’s shoulder, then collapsed again.

“Dean,” Sam’s voice came from very far away. “I’m here.”

“W-what happened?”

“Cas finished it.” Sam seemed to be shaking uncontrollably, but his eyes were dry.

“Cas,” Dean said, around the shredded flesh that had once been his throat. “Where is he?” He looked around, but found there were no angels of any kind nearby. He could just make out Elle’s figure, a little ways above them, and as his eyes adjusted he could see that she was breathing, and that that the side of her pale gray t-shirt was seeping through with blood—no, darker than blood, darker even than demon smoke. It wept from an unseen wound, pooling around her before oozing its way down the hill. Dean got to his knees in an attempt to get up and walk to her, but then the whole sky caught on fire. Stars seemed to be falling upwards, towards the heavens, a hundred thousand meteorites defying gravity.

“It’s the angels,” Sam said, almost inaudible. “They’re…”

“Flying,” Dean finished for him. The gates of Heaven had burst wide open, and the white-gold light illuminated the tips of Sam’s hair, his upturned eyes and childlike expression. Dean imagined Bronze Age shepherds, shivering in frosty fields, with only the restless sounds of their flocks for company, miles away from home. How they must of have trembled and wept at this kind of display. He thought of them wailing and falling in sheer terror, and he felt a twinge of sympathy.

He thought of the angels, who had walked wounded across the earth for years in human vessels, dragging their ruined wings behind them like an unspoken crime; creatures of flight rendered flightless, suddenly regaining their power, their freedom, their sense of self. Was Cas among them? Dean thought back to that ragged expanse of starlight that he had seen in the church and wondered if the spell had worked for him, too.

A hiss behind them drew their attention back to where they'd left Elle. She was awake. She sat up without any apparent sign of effort, and looked calmly at the dark liquid running from her body. She flexed her fingers experimentally and then laid her hand down right in the pool. It was like dropping a match into gasoline. A pale blue aurora sprang up as though it had been called. She watched it for a moment and said nothing, as though she were not human flesh, wreathed in flame.

“Elle?” Sam called at last, hesitantly. “You okay?”

She raised her head, and canted it slightly as she looked at them. The flames fanned around her and made shadows dance in the carved hollows of her face, before they extinguished. The Darkness was gone. Dean felt pinpricks of nameless terror spread across the surface of his skin.

“I'm fine,” she said, and her voice was so normal that Dean felt, inexplicably, even more unnerved than before. “I'm fine. I just...remembered something while I was asleep, that's all.”

“Remembered what?” Sam asked, and though his voice was even, Dean knew he felt the same fear. It moved like a taut wire between them, connecting them. The erratic beat of Sam's heart reverberated behind Dean's breastbone.

“It doesn't matter,” Elle said, getting to her feet. She walked towards them, and Dean couldn't help but notice that her clothes remained intact, her skin remained unburned. Not even the grass on the hill had blackened.

“You got hit pretty bad by the Darkness,” Dean said, shrinking back, in spite of himself.

“Yes. That was a surprise.” She pointed to the canvas bag that had gotten flung a few feet in front of Sam. “There's some Twinkies in there. Would you hand it to me, please?”

“Sure, sure, yeah,” Sam said, dragging the bag towards him and then passing it to her, without taking his eyes off of her face. Neither he nor Dean had managed to stand up during this entire exchange.

She smiled at him and pulled out the box, then unwrapped one and ate it in a single bite. “Wow, these are good. I mean, they're terrible, but they're good.” She unwrapped two more, and handed one to each of them. They stared at them blankly, as though they couldn't discern their purpose. “Eat. You haven't eaten anything since yesterday, and you need your strength. I'm sorry I don't have anything better. If I had more time...” When they made no move to obey, she drew her eyebrows together. “Boys, eat.”

They did. Satisfied, Elle dropped the bag at her feet.

“Elle, what...” Dean began, but she cut him off, crouching down onto her haunches. She looked at him closely and smiled.

“Shh, you're very tired. Listen, boys, when it's over, whatever's in that bag is yours. I'm sure you'll find some use for it. You're both such...resourceful people.”

“Wait, where are you going? What do you mean 'when it's over'?”

She said nothing, but kissed them each on their foreheads, very gently. For a brief moment, Dean was going to ask her what the hell was wrong with her, but the the full extent of his fatigue seemed to hit him all at once. He blinked at her and felt himself slumping back, falling asleep, almost against his will.

And then, things got weird.

****

Dean had been in the desert for days. The world had stripped itself of both its shadows and their sources, and for weeks in either direction, all he saw was salt. He had the vague sense that he was being followed by someone. Or something. An unseen pursuer dogged his steps, causing the air to bunch and coil around him, like a living thing. But every time he turned, everywhere he turned, he was alone.

Had the angels succeeded in driving back the Darkness, only to leave the world skinned and raw, like a nerve? Was endless day better than endless night? And though the sun never set, he knew, without understanding how, that he had been walking for days. The white salt dust coated him from head to foot, until he looked like he had been formed out of the desert clay himself.

He was either dreaming or dead. There was no other explanation for his survival under the bald red eye of the sun. His flesh should have been blistering and flaking off of his body in this heat, his eyes shriveling within their sockets. The thirst alone should have killed him, and yet it continued, unslaked and unabated for days and days, without any sign of a way to end it. He was dreaming, or he was dead; and if he was dead, well, then he had a pretty good idea of where he'd ended up, though this was a Hell beyond his recollection. Cas had told him that he'd traded places with the archangels so that Dean and Sam might be assured of their passage upstairs.

 _My soul in Hell for yours in Heaven_ , Cas' voice resounded in his ears.

 _Yeah, well, I hate to tell you this, buddy, but I think you've been had_.

There was no point. There was no way to go on. There was no end to the sands he was trying to cross, and the desire to sink to his hands and knees and wail into the empty sky overwhelmed him. For a long time, he did just that. He screamed and screamed into the profound silence, and his screams were swallowed up, with nothing to bounce off of, nothing to give them credence. He couldn't do it, couldn't keep dragging his dead body across dead land. He would go mad. He would lie down and wait to die.

Dean stood up. He kept walking.

Finally, after god knew how long, the desert yielded up one of her mercies, but she did so grudgingly, a jewel pulled from a clenched fist. It was the barest shimmer on the horizon, and at first, he took it for a heat mirage, one of the torments of the first few days. He walked towards it listlessly, expecting it to vanish into dust, as all the others had. But this one grew solid, resolved itself to a pale blue saucer ringed by a green fringe of palms.

He was dreaming, or he was dead, but it did not matter. He found himself running towards the distant murmur of water.

Dean half ran, half slid, down the last dune, and crawled the last few yards before falling in, laughing. He washed the white rime of salt from his body and hair, reveling in the cool water as it soothed his parched skin. He drank and drank and drank, and could not get enough of the sweet taste of it on his tongue. He tore off his shirt and waded out, hip-deep, where the water rushed up from a hidden spring and ducked under, staying there until he was chilled. He rose back up with a gasp, and for once the heat of the sun was a pleasure and not a punishment.

When the giddy delirium had faded slightly, Dean regained enough presence of mind to look at where he was. He counted eleven bubbling springs. No, twelve. Twelve springs bordered by the long tasseled shadows of date palms, each heavy with fruit. He turned back to the little jut of stone that he had seen earlier, planning to sit under the shade of one of the trees and dangle his feet in the water, when he jerked to a stop.

“Cas?”

For Dean recognized the familiar silhouette of his shoulders, the outline of his coat, so completely inappropriate in the heat that he was tempted to laugh.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean walked over to him, working against the cold drag of the water and the weight of his saturated clothes. The sun shone around Cas, making his figure a stark shadow framed in light, towering over the expanse of water like a monument. It wasn’t until he crouched down into the shade, to pull Dean from the water one-handed, that Dean was certain it was him.

“Were you following me?”

“Following you? No. I’ve been tracking you, but from the other direction.”

“Am I dead?”

“No, not that I can tell.” Cas looked out over the oasis with a curious expression on his face. “All I know is that I can’t wake you where you and Sam are, out there, so I decided to go looking for you.” He looked back at Dean, as though he were trying to figure something out. “Do you...come here often?”

“Do I...Wait. Are you giving me a _pick up line_ right now?”

Cas’ eyes widened. “What? No! No. I mean, have you ever dreamed of this place before?”

“Oh, no. I’m dreaming, huh? I’ll tell you what, it’s been a pretty shitty dream for the most part. It just got a whole lot better, though,” Dean said, smiling a little in invitation.

Cas didn’t catch it. “I don’t know if you’re actually dreaming or not, Dean. I can’t wake you up, like I said, and normally I can find you in your dreams fairly easily. This isn’t...this isn’t normal.” He turned his attention back to the gently swaying expanse of palms.

“Elle knocked us out somehow, back on that hill. Me and Sam both.”

“Elle?” Cas asked, and a muscle worked delicately in his jaw. “She’s not there. I thought perhaps…Did she wake?”

“Yeah, man, it was, it was pretty weird, I’ll be honest with you. The Darkness just kind of poured out of her and then she uh, set it on fire just by touching it.”

“ _What_?” Cas’ head whipped around so quickly that, had he been human, he probably would have torn something.

“Yeah, she sat up and just, boom, lit it up. She sat right there in the middle of it and didn’t burn or anything."

“I...I see.” Cas said, and he had gone pale beneath the perpetual tan of his skin. “Did she say anything?”

“Um,” Dean said, reaching for Cas in alarm. “She said she remembered something, but she didn’t say what. Then she gave us Twinkies and knocked us out. It was pretty weird, not gonna lie.”

Cas sat down heavily on the little lip of rock, knees pulled up to his chest in a defensive pose that Dean felt right in his heart. “Hey, you okay?”

Cas did not look at him for a moment, but then nodded his head, absently. “The battle is all but won, now. That’s how I managed to slip away. The front I was overseeing has been cleared, and the Darkness dispersed into those who were willing. And everyone was. Her plan was brilliant, actually. Much better than the original.” He looked up at Dean, and the blue light from the lagoon reflected off his eyes. “Do you know, Dean, not one of my siblings has died in this battle? Not one. Hannah was struck down next to me; I saw it and I couldn’t stop it. She was swallowed whole and spat out, but in the next instant she was up again, completely healed.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“It’s wonderful. A miracle. The kind of which I have not seen in...some time. Though not entirely without precedent.” He pursed his lips in thought. “I begin to understand. I think.”

“Understand what?”

Instead of answering, Cas reached for his hand. “Dean, when the last of the Darkness is gone, and the battle is over, Lucifer and Michael are free. And I, well...I shouldn’t have abandoned my post, I know, but I just wanted to see you, just once more.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that,” Dean said, more sharply than he intended. But Cas did not seem hurt by his tone; he had to know what was behind it. Dean tried again. “It will work out, Cas. It _will_.”

Cas nodded, pressing his lips to each of Dean’s bruised knuckles. “Of course it will,” he said, quietly. He turned Dean’s hand over, to kiss the palm, and the branching delta of veins in the wrist. “It will be fine.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.” He followed the curve of Dean’s arm to the elbow, and laid another kiss there, where the skin was pale and mostly unfreckled.

“How long have we got?” Dean asked, fighting to keep his eyes open.

“Out there?” Cas asked, pausing momentarily. “Not very long at all. In here? Probably until nightfall.”

“Night doesn’t fall in here.”

“It will.” He had moved on to Dean’s chest, pressing a kiss to each point of his tattoo.

“It’s like a thousand degrees out here,” Dean said, tugging on the sleeve of Cas’ coat; but Cas continued, unabated. “Come on, take something off.”

“Dean you know I don’t…” He sat back slightly. “Oh, right.” He shrugged out of his coat, then the suit jacket, and set them to the side, while he undid his tie with one hand. The white of his shirt was dazzling in the glittering reflection of the water. “Better?”

“A little,” Dean said, pulling him down for a kiss. “What’s the matter, you afraid someone’s going to see us?”

Cas laughed, and Dean could not read the meaning behind it, nor the way Cas worried his bottom lip as he unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall away, after a moment’s hesitation. Dean regarded his profile with the feeling that he was missing something. “No. I’m pretty sure that we’re the one thing in the universe that no one's got their eye on.”

His uncertainty was completely gone with that, shed like another layer of unwanted clothing. Cas pushed Dean back flat against the surface of the rock, cradling the back of his head with one hand and interlacing their fingers with the other. It was blessedly cool in the shade, with the fresh smell of water wafting up around them, but Cas’ body was just as hot as Dean remembered, a welcome rival to the desert sun. The difference in temperature made goosebumps rise along the expanse of his skin. Cas kissed him like he was starving for it, leaving Dean gasping for air, as though he’d momentarily forgotten that Dean needed to breathe. Perhaps he had.

Cas acted without any discernible plan, other than ‘see if I can make Dean make that noise again, but louder’, and here he succeeded admirably. Dean was overwhelmed by the sheer strength he had, good god; how had he forgotten that Cas had once lifted a _one ton anvil_ with no effort whatsoever? He gave up his attempts at trying to free his hand or undo Cas’ belt and instead let himself be content with being pressed back and held down under the gentle onslaught.

“How the hell,” Dean groaned, tipping his head back so that Cas had better access to his neck, “did Jacob even manage to wrestle an angel to the ground?”

Cas looked up and gave him an amused half-smile. “He managed it because he and Anna weren’t actually wrestling. That was a deliberate mis-translation of the act.”

“ _Anna_?” Dean gasped, and then realized that he had somehow lost the rest of his clothing during their discussion (and how did Cas even manage that, seriously, that wasn’t fair).

“Mmm,” Cas said, sliding further down Dean’s body. “I looked up her old records. She had a preference for green eyes, it seems.”

“ _Ah!_ Oh, wow, okay. Really?” Dean drew in a deep breath and made himself continue the conversation. “So, when he said, ‘I will not let thee go, except that thou bless me’, he meant—” Dean’s brain shorted out momentarily as Cas’ teeth grazed his inner thigh—”He meant what exactly?”

“I’m glad you asked.” Then he paused, and looked up at Dean, with a trace of his earlier uncertainty. “Let me know if I do this correctly.”

“Do wh- _fucking hell, god damn._ ”

Cas withdrew. “Is that a yes or a no?”

“Yes, that’s a yes, yes. _Fuck_.”

“Good.” He grabbed Dean’s hand and put it in his hair. “Now, don’t let me go.”

It occurred to Dean, some time later, that the ambient temperature of the air had dropped, and the shadows of the trees had lengthened. When he blinked the endorphin haze from his eyes, he saw that the hard blue plane of the sky had deepened and softened to purple, with the sun a great fiery rose at its edge. A few pale stars appeared overhead. He must have fallen asleep. He was still naked, though covered now by some sort of blanket. It took him a moment to realize that it was Cas’ coat, and that Cas was standing a small distance away, straightening his tie and watching the setting sun. Its rays gilded the sharp line of his jaw and the straight incline of his nose, the curve of his eyelashes.

“Cas?”

“It’s over, Dean,” Cas said, slipping the suit jacket back on. He made no move towards Dean to gather up the coat. Dean struggled to find his feet. He pulled the coat around him.

“What?”

“The Darkness has been dispersed. The battle’s won. I...It’s time to execute the contract.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“How do I get you out, Cas?” He clutched at him like a child, feeling small and breakable and terribly, terribly stupid.

Cas smiled at him, ran his thumb along the high line of Dean’s cheekbone, and gave him a soft kiss. “The spell I used won’t work now, but you’ll find a way. You’re resourceful.”

“Cas, I…”  
But Cas suddenly went tense, as though being pulled in twelve directions by unseen hands. “Dean,” he managed to say, but the rest was lost as he was drawn sharply back into the night air, disappearing from view as though he’d never been there at all.

Dean was suddenly very cold.

****

The desert wasn’t through with him yet, though. As the night shook out its jeweled net of stars, Dean dressed himself. His hands were slowed by grief and cold. He suddenly became aware of a presence in the palm grove, and turned hopefully back to the little ledge he and Cas had been on that day.

But it was not Cas. It was not a person at all. He could see a dark shape, against the softer darkness of the night sky, which gradually revealed itself to be a lioness, watching him with unblinking amber eyes. _Shit_. He was completely unarmed. He cast about wildly for something to use as a weapon--a rock or a branch, anything. When he looked back up, the lioness was gone and in its place was a familiar petite body, haloed by the full moon.

“Elle?”

“Hello, Dean.”

“What the fuck?”

“You’re so succinct. I like it.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m the one that got you into this mess. Well, not exactly _me_ , per se, but it was me enough that I felt compelled to help get you out of it.” She stood and stretched, and Dean saw flickering hints of the lioness in her shadow.

“What do you mean _not you, per se_?”

“Think of it like...Horcruxes.”

“Hor...Wait, are you--”

But she cut him off, suddenly directly behind him. He turned, his hands instinctively curled into fists.

“I don’t really go for labels anymore.” She looked up at the stars. Dean noticed that there was no steam trail denoting the rhythm of her breath, as there was his. “For a long time, I longed for death and death rebuffed me, refused to even take my calls. I sank to grief and languished in dust. I gave up. I shattered, hoping for smaller deaths that would accumulate into the final one, but that wasn’t...it didn’t work out that way. And so I slept instead.”

Dean’s throat had constricted, but whether from fear or anger, he couldn’t say.

“You were with Castiel here?” Elle asked, changing the subject so suddenly that Dean nearly got whiplash.

“I…” But Dean bit back his answer, suddenly terrified for what might happen if he said yes.  She looked at him intently and he realized that he still had Cas’ coat wrapped around him.

“That’s so romantic,” she said with a grin. “Don’t worry, I didn’t spy. Where is he?”

“He’s...gone. In. In the Cage,” he forced himself to spit out.

"I wasn't in time." She stalked away toward the trees. “That was a mistake.”

“I know.”

“No, the Cage was a mistake.” She bit her lip as she turned back to him. “Dean, I can’t stay. I’m looking for someone.”

“Looking for someone? Who the fuck can hide from you?”

She laughed. “I’d say I’m looking for my better half, but let’s be honest, I’m the better half. But let me help you. Everything you need should be in the old book.”

“The one in the box?”

“Yes, it’s...basically a book of notes to self. The other books will give you what you need to use it.” She ran her hands through her short hair. “I can’t tell you how this story ends, Dean.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true. I’m not the writer; you are. But I have faith in you. I know you’ll win. I like Castiel. He’s got a lot of heart. He’s...he’s a failsafe.” She turned to go. “Dean, when you find him, make sure you call him by the right name.”

“What do you mean?” He avoided her eyes, suddenly feeling as though his soul had been laid bare, with all its secrets and shames exposed to a bright light.

“You know the name I mean.”

And she was gone. Dean shouted after her until he was hoarse, demanding more information, but gradually he realized he was alone. Over the desert, the sun began to rise.

****

He awoke on a grassy hill, with Sam next to him. In the east, the day dawned bright and clear. It was the fortieth day since the rising of the Darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Linguists amongst you will probably note the similarity between the name Elle and the name El, the latter of which gives us names such as Gabriel, Michael, Samuel, and Castiel. You might note that the term 'manna' literally means "What is it?", and that 'Ish' in biblical Hebrew traditionally translates as 'man'._   
>  _And some people, like[BurningTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea) are just clever. ;)_   
>  _Yet again I have used my rigorous religious training to produce blasphemous pornography. *nervous laughter*_   
>  _Let me know if you have any questions, or if something doesn't make sense!_


	19. The Lovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just reach out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listening to [this](https://youtu.be/xpMNXEY_tio) and [this](https://youtu.be/2BrV2jrghhI) might help, or it might make it worse. Either way, they are great songs, and very apt.

Hell had its own kind of order. Castiel knew this better than anyone. No one, angel or otherwise, have been such a frequent visitor. To plunge into Perdition and rise again, and again, and again (a little worse for wear each time, it was true) was unheard of. To ally with Hell—to walk its halls not as a tormentor or a liberator but as a partner, and then as a betrayer—that had been equally unthinkable until Castiel had done just that. He thought of himself as Hell’s harrier, snatching prey from its jaws as it foamed and roared and snapped at his retreating back. Hell was one of the few things against which an angel might be called small, but he had never minded, because he had always been fast, and strong. The fastest and strongest in his garrison, in fact, after Anna fell.

He did not feel particularly fast, now, or very strong, but he certainly felt small.

Castiel's luck, which had never been his best feature, was bound to run out one day. Hell resented the prizes he had stolen from it, and it swallowed him up with a snarl of satisfaction when he had taken that last, great dive.

He had fallen a long way. It had taken days before he had finally stopped himself from instinctively trying to fly. His wings were perfect now, healed and whole, and completely useless against the force of the spell that bore him downward. In the end, he had simply flared them out to their full length, coasting on the air currents and banking sharply to avoid the bursts of fire that occasionally leaped out at him. He had flown, of course, in battle, but that had been functional, the hard-edged pleasure of necessity. He had never gotten a chance to use them for his own enjoyment in their uninjured state. There simply hadn’t been time for one last flight, not when he’d had more pressing matters to attend to.

This would have to do.

Cas hit the wall of cold air that marked the deepest part of Hell. Again the mantle of ice crackled to life around him, coating every feather tip. He wished, futilely, that he still had his coat, though it was not in his flesh that he felt the cold. Never mind, it was better that Dean kept it. Dean would have use for it, either practically or sentimentally.

When he eventually landed, a long time later, he knelt on hands and knees and drew himself inward as tightly as he could. He stayed that way for weeks, shrinking away from the jagged pulse of magic that marked the boundary of the Cage. It was worse inside; of course it was, how could he have hoped it might be otherwise? The low throb that caused his grace to falter like a wind-blown candle from the outside was louder here, and yet what he could not bear was the _silence_.

Even when he had muted his angel radio, all those years ago, even when he had tuned himself to a different frequency altogether, he still felt the presence of the Host. It had been the same way he had felt the quiet thud of the blood in his veins, or the electric hum of his nervous system when he was graceless, and had secretly pretended that those background noises were his siblings talking to him, reassuring him in ways that they would never do in reality. They had comforted him when there was no other comfort to be had. And he had quietly hoped, back then, that something might happen to turn it back on, that some great event might flip the switch that was still wired somewhere inside of him. Angels were, after all, connected to each other in ways that human beings, human families, simply were not—no, not even the Winchesters, though they came as close to angels as Castiel had ever seen.

Now there was nothing, in the truest sense of the word. Down here, he had no breath and no air to breathe, no heartbeat, no automatic human processes at all. And the radio was dead. It did not matter which channel he tried, only empty air answered his call. The Cage was paradoxically the loudest and most silent place he had ever been.

Castiel felt his awareness of time splinter after a while, first subtly, a hairline crack, then deeply, down to the bone, spilling marrow. Linear time still progressed. He could not stop the counting-out of it in his head—he had lived too long on earth, been too close to human, to stop parceling time up in seconds, hours, days, seeing the machine from the inside. But, as a creature of Heaven, he also knew time beyond its measuring. He saw past and present and future as a million, million possibilities existing simultaneously. It was why time travel was so taxing; one had to pinpoint the exact desired possibility and shake it loose from its infinite web, then locate it within linear time, and then bend a precise spot in the universe to that carefully-isolated point in the slipstream. It was like jumping from the moon and landing on the head of a pin, at the bottom of the ocean.

Normally, Castiel could fit both concepts of time neatly together, and neither troubled him. Gradually, however, he became aware that time was uncoupling itself in his mind, spinning apart like two planets around a sun that could not hold them in its orbit anymore. This was worsened by the fact that, in his exiled state, the constant flux of possible time suddenly stopped, cut off neatly and wholly, like an amputated limb. Linear time ticked on, loud in the gloom, a mechanical click in his head with no counterpoint. Heaven, earth, all of it, may have fallen and he would have no way of knowing.

His siblings might all be dead. Sam and Dean might...no. No. It had only been, what? Just under five years. That meant it had been...only a couple of weeks on earth. Surely Heaven still stood, surely Hannah was fine, Sam was fine, Dean was fine. They had to be. Surely the world had not ended again in two weeks.

But then again, when it came to the Winchesters, two weeks was probably more than enough time to become entangled in yet another apocalypse. So perhaps...No. No.

Even though he could not feel them, now, could not hear their prayers, he had to believe they were alright. Dean would be looking for him. He had promised. Castiel did not believe for one moment that Dean would succeed in his plan, but he knew that somewhere, Dean was looking for him, would continue looking for him until he died. Whenever that might be. He could not hear Dean any more, but he knew. He held that tightly to himself, hid it away somewhere beyond Hell’s reach.

And that was another layer to the silence that insinuated itself slowly into his being without him noticing. Though Dean was warded, he had always been able to sense him like a distant presence, a constant, like the voices of the Host, or the arpeggiated shimmer of time-beyond-time. He had mistaken it for an ache at first, a physical thing, one that defied all his attempts at healing. He could not understand its origin. He had checked and rechecked both his vessel and his true form, searching for some unseen wound, but of course, there was none. It was, he eventually came to realize, an emotion: a sense of yearning that Dean did not even know he was sending out.

Some time later, he had felt another ache take hold, and realized with considerable surprise (and, at the time, shame) that it was his own. Well, that, at least, could keep him company. Eventually, he realized, the Cage could sense it, too. It could feel the longing, and Castiel could not shut it off, no matter what he tried. All he could do was mask the source.

The Cage began to talk to him. He ignored it.

For possibly the first time in his life, he envied Lucifer, who had at least had Michael to keep him company, another being against which to calibrate his existence. It was a Host of two, and an angry, vicious one, at that, but at least they had not been alone.

When he would not answer, the Cage tried a new tactic.

First, it sent him Anna, and she stared at him with huge dark eyes, reaching for him, pleading with him. He ignored her, too, and eventually she flaked away and melted back into the walls.

It sent other angels, felled and fallen. This made sense, Cas supposed. The Cage had been designed with such angels in mind, and it recognized what Cas was, even if it didn't know who, exactly, he was. Angels for angels, fallen for fallen seemed to be its thinking. And so, Samandriel spouted blood from his boyish mouth ( _He was always such a good soldier, so true_ , Cas thought with regret), and Balthazar spoke at him with a look of heartbreak and betrayal ( _I'm sorry_ ). Michael called him a disgrace to his rank and many other things that he had doubtlessly repeated while inside, until the Cage could parrot them back almost flawlessly.

Lucifer, whom it knew the best, it created the most convincingly: honey that left a trail of slime under his skin, casual, offhand cruelty recreated down to the letter. Castiel had flashbacks of rotten grace streaming into him from Sam, infecting him with Hell-sickness.

Gabriel watched him with eyes crinkling in good-humored reproach, said he'd missed him.

When none of those angels got a reaction, Hannah appeared, flickering uncertainly between both vessels, but always looking at him with unabashed candor and warmth, almost like a child, almost like...He ignored her, too.

 _I know what you're doing_ , Cas thought bitterly, covering his face with his hands. It was trying to get a response from him so that he would talk to it, become enmeshed with it. _It learns_ , Cas remembered. _It knows I am not Lucifer, I am not Michael, but it does not know me yet._

 **Who are you?** It was asking, in its own way. **I will get inside of you and you will tell me. Let me in.**

The Cage could obviously see far enough into him that it could pull forth the faces of those who had meant something to him, even if it had not yet grasped _what_ they'd meant. He could feel it trying to understand, probing, pushing at him from all sides to figure out who went where, who he'd break for.

He did not speak; he bit his tongue and tasted the ordinary copper taste of blood, and when that did not work, he pierced his hand with his own blade and watched the silver-white light of his grace leak through, with nowhere to go. The pain kept him grounded. He kept calm. He hid himself, slid back into old programming, into a state of blankness that Heaven-of-old would have applauded. Still, parts of him spilled out, against his will. Eventually it learned to call him Castiel. He bit his lip until it bled to keep from speaking again.

It sent him Meg, with an almost palpable air of confusion.

Castiel involuntarily raised his hand towards her, seeing her wounds, her sardonic smile and her sad eyes, and it was only the anchoring pull of the blade that kept him present. _Fallen human in place of a fallen angel_ , Cas thought. _That's clever._

**Who are you, Castiel?**

_Sorry, but if you were really Meg, you'd never call me that,_ he thought, and he actually laughed out loud. The Cage was so startled that it drew back for a moment.

He dropped his hand and turned his face away until Meg disappeared, too. He could feel it pressing further, and he retreated deeper inward, relying on the fierce, stony emptiness that had served him in so many wars. He knew it would fail eventually—it always did—but for now he relied on it, resolute, like an angel in a painting, made stiff and remote by holiness.

At the eight-year mark it sent Adam, reasoning, he guessed, that he had cared enough about Adam to retrieve him. But all Cas could muster was a spiteful satisfaction at the thought of another prize stolen, an innocent soul he'd actually managed to save, for once, a battle he'd managed to win. With a noise that sounded remarkably like irritation, Adam dissolved in flame.

It sent Claire, but this Claire was all wrong; sweet and earnestly devoted, in a way that she had probably never been after her father had disappeared. She smiled instead of rolling her eyes, asked for his help instead of teasing him. He did speak, then, one word: “No.”

After that, the Cage almost left him alone, hissing angrily in the background but not attempting any more visits. He could feel it thinking, circling like a wolf pack, could almost feel it breathing down his neck. He had kept the deepest part of himself hidden, and the Cage knew it and grew angry. It must have heard the name “Winchester” countless times during the archangels' confinement, but it knew of them only what Michael and Lucifer knew: that Cas had allied himself with them, that he'd broken the rules with them—but then, breaking the rules was an integral part of his being. He seemed born, after a fashion, to do just that. It also knew that he had left Sam's soul in Hell, that Cas had not rescued him, as he had Adam; perhaps it thought that Cas had grown to resent them, and left Sam as a punishment. Good. Let it think that.

The Cage pressed again, more forcefully this time, and Cas thought of Sam, burying an angel blade in his back; of Dean, looming over him like an executioner's ax. He thought of their indifference and their anger, and it hurt, but it worked. He had to hurt himself to save himself, it seemed. Neither brother appeared.

Cas could not tell if it was growing tired or if it was simply working on a new tactic. Probably the latter. It knew that it had time to take him apart at its leisure.

He kept calm. He withdrew the blade from his hand and watched the wound heal in an instant.

He wished vaguely for sleep, or rather, for the need for sleep, for food and water, for breathing. Something other than stasis. An angel was never truly still, of course, the way light was never truly still—grace moved ceaselessly, seething and recoiling, the neverending white-hot pulse of a star. And yet, as he had once told Dean, he wasn't alive in the same sense that a human being was alive, and that was never more evident than now. He closed his eyes.

And then, after nine years, he heard Sam's voice. Only his voice, for some reason. Cas' eyes snapped open of their own accord and he drew inward again, wrapping all six wings around himself tightly. A mistake, Cas realized too late. _That was clearly a defensive move. Damn it all._ And he laughed at his own poor choice of words, ignoring the slight note of hysteria that had crept in. He carefully put his wings away.

He kept calm.

He tried not to listen to what Sam was saying, but he couldn't help but hear a few words, some disjointed phrases. “...won't have long...” Sam's voice was saying, and it was strange, it didn't have the fever-sheen of unreality that the other Cage manifestations had. “...incredibly, dangerously stupid idea, and you've had plenty...” Cas sat up at that, feeling the carefully-metered calm begin to stutter strangely in his head. No. He held out his blade again and gripped it so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

“You need to...” Need to what? _No, don't listen._ He ran through the Trisagion in his head, in every language he knew. It didn't work.

And then Hannah's voice? _Hannah's voice? Again?_ That hadn't worked before, why try it a second time? What was its strategy here?

“...but I have the power of flight, I should...”

And then Dean's voice. Castiel felt ice honeycomb what passed for his heart, colder than even the heart of Hell.

“It will work...don't tell me...I promised...now...”

And then it was quiet again, so, so, so quiet.

So quiet, Cas realized, because the Cage was silent. The sound of the Cage had been like the nauseating starburst of pain that had heralded his first and only migraine, and now it was gone. Another trick, another tactic, surely, but why? To what end?

He stood up, blade in hand, which was a completely pointless gesture; nothing that the Cage showed him could be killed. Still, he would rather be an armed opponent, if only in his own mind, than a passive plaything.

“Whatever you're planning, just get it over with,” Cas said, with a bravado he did not at all feel, “You're as trapped in here with me as I am with you, so come on, let's see what you've got.” _Fuck_. He shouldn't have spoken out loud. He shook his head, sharply, in self-reproach, as he walked the entire circumference of the Cage, eyeing its walls mistrustfully.

“That's not true. We're both getting out of here right the fuck now.”

Cas froze. Dean's voice again, a gruff drawl of sound that Cas recognized down to the individual vibrations, just as he recognized Dean himself down to the individual whorls on the pads of his fingers. So true to life that he could almost believe it, almost, and...when had he cracked? When had he spoken and not realized it? When had he betrayed himself? How had it won? It had only been ten years, surely he hadn't broken in ten? _John Winchester had lasted a century, Dean thirty years—and I broke in ten. Of course I did._

Oh well, if you're going to Hell, why not go all the way?

“Is that so?” Cas asked, with a conversational lilt to his voice, giving in, feeling old madnesses rise to greet him. He tucked the blade back into his sleeve. “You know, that is impressively realistic. Your faith in a doubtlessly reckless plan was quite convincing. I give it...nine out of a possible ten.”

“Wait, _what_?”

“Alright, if you don't like reckless, I can go with insouciant, maybe.”

Dean swore, loudly, and Cas was again astonished with the way he'd been broken into so completely without noticing. How had it gotten even that right? “Still,” Cas continued, with a smile. He knew that he must look completely deranged, but he wanted to prove that he still had some grasp of his own self left, even if he was only clinging on by his fingernails. “If you're going to torment me like this for the rest of eternity, do it to my face. Give me something pleasant to look at, at least.”

“What—what the fuck are you talking about? Cas, look, I can't actually go in there, not when I don't have an angel riding shotgun. It doesn't work that way. Now come on, you've got to hurry. Just...walk up to the edge and reach out, I'll grab you.”

“Oh, is that why you've gone quiet all of a sudden? I understand now. Draw me to the edge. That's clever. That's good, that's very good.”

“Castiel, for fuck's sake, I told you I would get you out and I'm getting you out. Sam and I, we did the spell. We've shut this bitch down. But you have to come on, it only works as long as I'm down here. I've got Hannah on standby. She’s ready to jumpstart me back to life, so we've only got, like ten minutes, tops. Just. Come on, man.”

“Sam? And Hannah, too?” Cas laughed, thought his face might split open from it, and Dean swore again. “This is so thorough! I don't know how you've managed it; I don't recall speaking any of their names aloud.”

“Cas, please, just...please, come on.”

The smile froze on his face. That was the second time it had called him ‘Cas’. “Why so familiar?” he asked, as the weight of the nickname hit him square in the chest. “I said  that my name was Castiel. Not that I believe in standing ceremony, mind you, but where did you get the shortened version from?” He felt a pricking at the back of his mind, like the nerve-singing tingle in hands and feet that he sometimes got when he looked at the world from a great height, or when...

“Because I fucking gave you that nickname, for Christ's sake. Right after we met.” And something in Dean's voice sounded desperate, as though Dean were breaking apart somewhere beyond Cas' sight, and he felt himself drawn forward, forward, outward, reaching out, wanting to just reach out. Just.

_Wait. No._

“Alright,” Cas said, drawing his hand back a little. “You win. You win. Just stop. Please.”

“Cas,” Dean began, and then suddenly gasped. “ _Fuck_ , seriously, come on, she's trying to bring me back up.” No answer. “Don't make me leave here without you. Do not. I can't go through another Purgatory again, I just can't.”

Cas found he could not retreat any further, but neither could he will himself forward. He stood, with his fingertips almost brushing the walls of the Cage not not quite, _not quite_ , making contact.

Dean practically howled in rage at the continued silence, as though it caused him physical pain. And then, suddenly, he grew quiet, too.

“She said I had to call you by the right name,” Dean's voice said, hushed, almost sounding awed. “The _right_ name. I thought she meant what I always called you, the name that I gave you. I didn't think she knew, but...she knew.”

“She? Who...”

“Okay, listen to me. Just reach out when I call your name. Don’t be afraid.”

“ _What do you want from me?_ Why…” But he could not finish his thought. Suddenly the endless dark flared bright with the sound of his name, his real name, reverberating around the walls of the Cage, the whole damned world echoing with its sound. Though Dean had whispered it, scarcely louder than a breath, everything in him called out a reply and he had to reach out, he couldn't not reach for Dean. His hand made contact, and everything in him screamed.

Cas' first thought, on waking, was that he'd known it was a trick, and he berated himself for falling for it.

****

His second thought was that he did not remember the smell of coffee in Hell. Sulfur, of course, and the smell of burnt flesh and hair, sometimes the smell of blood, the smell of rot and decay, or the sour gall of ruined grace, but not...not coffee. He also did not remember the Cage being so comfortable. Experimentally, he moved a few centimeters, and whatever it was he was lying on accommodated him in the most gratifying way. A little, involuntary sound escaped him.

There was a rustling noise by his head, but he found he could not open his eyes to see what had caused it, and that he was so tired he could not bring himself to care. Whatever new torment was coming, he would just...deal with it. After a moment, something solid and strong, and remarkably like Dean's hand, landed on his forehead.

 _Dean's hand._ He recognized the weight of it, the pattern of the fingerprints against his skin.

His eyes snapped open, or they would have done, had he not been feeling so drugged and slow. As it was, his eyelids dragged up, his eyelashes tangled with each other. Finally, though, he could see.

“Hey,” Dean said. He was smiling, though his voice was rough. He did not move his hand.

“Hey.” His own voice was hardly better—being dead will do that to you, he supposed.

“How you feeling?”

And the inanity of the question, the pure, unadulterated absurdity of it, as though Castiel was recovering from a cold, or an argument with a friend, was such that he could only laugh. Perhaps Hell had made him strange. Well. Stranger. “Like a million dollars,” he managed to say eventually.

“You're a terrible liar, but at least you're trying.”

“No, that wasn't my most convincing work,” Cas said, with the remnants of the laugh still in his throat. “I need more time to prepare.”

Dean had begun stroking Cas' hair, watching his face with the same intensity he had shown back in that motel in Ohio, those many years ago.

“You did it,” Cas said.

“We had an appointment,” Dean said, and Cas felt his heart clench, a kind of pain he should have shrunk away from, but instead welcomed. Humanity was so bizarre, emotions made no sense all, but he did not care right now. He leaned into the feeling of Dean's hand on his head.

“You weren't going to come with me,” Dean continued, quiet, his gaze sliding somewhere down towards the end of the bed, where Cas’ feet moved slightly under the blanket.

“I thought it was a trick,” Cas said, attempting to sit up. Dean was having none of it, pushing him back down with a stern look, as though that alone was going to overcome angelic strength. Which, Cas admitted, it did, as he sank back down. “To be fair, you had the exact same reaction at first when I tried pulling you out. It's almost impossible to tell what's real down there.” He placed his hand over Dean's, where it still rested on his chest, against the beat of his heart. “Then, of course, you started fighting me. I trust I was a little more willing?”

“Ha! Yeah, man, you grabbed onto me something fierce,” Dean said, grinning at him. “Once you commit to something, you _really_ commit to it.”

“Well, yes,” Cas said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“I heard...I heard Sam,” Cas said, looking toward the ceiling of what he now recognized as Dean's room. “And Hannah?” He turned his head to look at Dean, trying to fish out pieces of reality from the wreckage in his mind.

“You did?” Dean sounded very surprised. “Yeah, that must have been when we...when we set up the spell. Cracked the door open, so to speak. Hannah offered to go in my place, since, you know, she's all powered up again, but I...well, I couldn't let anyone else do it.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, a warm, reassuring weight around which Cas instinctively wanted to curl his body, his whole self. “She was damn useful, though, brought me back good as new, although we almost ran out of time.”

“You died. For the spell,” Cas said slowly, as the realization settled into him. “To get me out.”

Dean shrugged. “Yeah, well. What else is new? Dean's dead, must be Tuesday. And anyway, you've died for me more than a few times, thought I'd return the favor,” he said, aiming for a light tone to offset the seriousness behind his eyes.

“Dean, I….” But he found it very hard to put into words what he was trying to say; there were too many there, fighting to get out, and none of them were the right ones. Human language was so… infuriatingly small sometimes.

“What?”

“Thank you.”

“Shut up,” Dean said, ducking his head.

“Even _I_ know that’s not the correct response.”

“Maybe you should try stabbing me instead,” Dean said, punching his shoulder, and it was obvious that he was losing the battle to contain his smile.

“Ugh, Dean.” Cas rolled his eyes and attempted to turn onto his side, but Dean held him in place.

“Sorry. I should have given you more of a show, you know, exploding lights, howling wind, maybe knock Sam out with my mind. The whole works…” He had resumed running his hand through Cas’ hair as he spoke, and his voice was fond and soft.

“Dean, I had _literally_ just taken a vessel for the first time in many thousands of years. I had barely figured out how to make myself fit in here.” But there was no real irritation behind his tirade.

“Oh yeah? Well, we’ll see if you have the same problem when we…”

“Hey! You’re awake!” Sam said brightly from the door. He was holding a steaming mug in his hands, clearly on his way to deliver it to Dean.

Dean cleared his throat but did not stand up. “Uh, yeah, hey, Sam. Sorry, I was going to come get you in a second.”

Sam looked skeptical, but only said: “It’s cool. I’m just glad to see you back here with us, Cas.” He came in and held the cup of coffee just out of Dean’s reach. “Dude, I don’t even know if I should let you have this. There’s probably more caffeine in your blood than there is plasma at this point.”

“Sam. Give me that cup of coffee right now or so help me…”

“I’m just saying, you should probably get some damn sleep,” Sam said, holding the cup of coffee over his head while Dean grabbed at it ineffectually. He wobbled slightly; his balance was clearly impaired. “Seriously, you’re edging into Manson lamps territory right now.”

“Only because you won’t give me the _fucking cup of coffee I asked for_.”

“This seems rather dangerous,” Cas pointed out, sitting up in alarm as he heard the boiling-hot liquid slosh around above them. “And a waste of perfectly good coffee.”

“Alright, alright, jeeze,” Sam said, handing the mug to Dean with a sigh. “You do need sleep, though.” He walked over to where Cas was now sitting and wrapped him in a hug that would have driven the breath from someone who had any. They held on for a long moment, not saying anything, until Sam released Cas with a slight squeeze to his shoulder.

“Sam, he’s never going to learn correct social cues if you keep hugging him like that,” Dean said, leaning against his dresser and smirking into his hard-won cup of coffee.

“Fuck social cues,” Sam said, laughing as he straightened up.

“What?” Cas asked, looking between them with a frown. “I did that right. I know I did.”

“Dean’s just being awkward.” Sam turned towards the door. “I told you he’s an awkward guy.”

“I am...I am _not_ …” Dean sputtered at Sam’s back.

“Go to bed Dean, for god’s sake,” Sam called, over his shoulder. “Cas, talk some sense into him. I’m going to go call Hannah.”

“Hannah?” Cas asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said, pausing. “She’s working out a rebuilding strategy now that things have finally cleared up. For Heaven and for earth. There’s a lot of work to be done in both places.”

Cas sat up further, attempting to swing his legs out and put his feet on the floor, but Dean was suddenly right there, pushing him back down. Cas gave an irritated grunt. “I can help with that. I know I can. I...I need to help.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean said, gently. “And she’d love your help, but I’ve told her that you that you’re not allowed to do anything until I say you’ve recovered.”

“That sounds...distinctly like an order.” Cas said, narrowing his eyes.

Dean seemed to immediately realize his mistake. “No, no, totally not an order,” he said, holding out his hands, placating. “Just...medical advice. Which she completely agreed with, by the way.”

“I’ll let the two of you figure this out on your own,” Sam’s voice said, from halfway down the hall, and retreating further. “I’ve got some prayers to send. GO TO BED, DEAN!”

Dean rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “ALRIGHT, SAM!” he shouted, and shut the door with more force than he perhaps needed to.

Cas adjusted his vision, and saw that the room was now dark, except for the thin yellow glow of the bedside lamp. No wait, that wasn’t the bedside lamp at all, it was a candle lantern, old and soot-darkened from years of use. “I thought you had your own generator here,” Cas said, watching the flame burn steadily in its dome of glass.

“We do, but we’ve been diverting some of the electricity to the local power station at night, while they try and get things up and running. Hannah’s obscured the source, so they don’t know we’re the one’s doing it. Must look like a miracle from their perspective.” Dean leaned against the door with his arms crossed in front of his chest, eyes fixed on the little pillar of light.

“That’s good of you,” Cas said warmly.

“Hm,” was all Dean offered, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the doorframe. “You were out for almost two days.  Hannah couldn’t wake you up. It was...um. It was tense. But she said you were in there, we just had to wait.”

“You’ve been up for two days?”

“More or less,” Dean said with a shrug, and opened his eyes. They shone in the weak light, but whether from tiredness or tears, or both, Cas could not say.

“Sam’s right, you need to sleep,” Cas said, pulling back the covers. He took in his own appearance for the first time. “These aren’t my clothes.”

“No. They’re mine. Your clothes smelled like Hell. Like actual Hell,” Dean said, making his way over and dropping his own clothing haphazardly along the way. “They’re in a bag in the garage. You can mojo them clean if you want. Your coat’s in the closet.” He sat down on the bed and removed his shoes and socks. It seemed to take considerable effort. He kept his jeans on, out of habit.

“These are fine for now,” Cas said, not even caring how he got into or out of any particular outfit. He smiled a little at the t-shirt he was wearing. “An angel?”

“Icarus,” Dean said, sliding into bed next to him and blinking sleepily.

“Really?”

“Mmhm. Led Zeppelin used it for their label. It’s a...a classic.” Dean said, around a giant yawn.

“Ironic, considering I’ve finally gotten my wings back,” Cas said, and made another move to stand. In spite of his obvious exhaustion, Dean’s hand shot out to grab him by the wrist the instant he felt him stir.

“What are you doing?”

“You don’t like it when I sit here and watch you,” Cas pointed out. “I was going to give you some privacy.” It was true, but he also felt a strong need to move away from Dean, to get to a safe distance, which made _no_ sense, because he also wanted was to close the gap between them with extreme prejudice.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“I detect a note of an order in there, as well,” Cas said, easing himself back down.

“Surprise me and obey for once,” Dean said.

“Very well.”

****

Some time later, towards dawn, Dean began to surface from sleep, and Cas had to voice a question that had been bothering him for several hours.

“Was she mad at me?”

“Huh?” Dean said, rolling over to look at him as though he’d started speaking in tongues. The blankets had slipped down almost to his thighs in his sleep, and Cas had given up trying to re-cover him after the fiftieth time. He was a remarkably restless sleeper.

“When you pulled me out, you said...you said that she told you to call me by the right name,” Cas said.

Dean stretched, languid and slow, and Cas inexorably found his eyes drawn to the three inches of bare flesh that appeared between his t-shirt and the waistband of his jeans. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Sorry it took me so long to figure out what she actually meant.”

“I thought…” Cas began, but then Dean rolled fully onto his back and rested his hands behind his head. The upward sweep of his arms increased the expanse of exposed skin by another inch and a half. Cas closed his eyes. “She knew about that, so that must mean that she knew...about everything else.”

“Well, yeah,” Dean said quietly. “But she said she didn’t spy on us.”

“I...Oh. I see,” Cas said, looking up toward the ceiling again and swallowing audibly. “And she wasn’t...she wasn’t angry. At me. For...it. Was she?”

“What? No, man, she wasn’t angry,” Dean said, as his dream-hazy brain finally took in what Cas was actually asking. He rolled over until he was half-lying on top of him, cupping the side of his face, with hands gentled by sleep and affection. “Cas, look at me. No, look at me.” Cas did so, with some difficulty. “You aren’t in trouble. She’s the one that told me to use that book of hers to get you out. She’s the one that told me to call you by your true name. Why would she do that if she was angry with you?”

“I...don’t know.”  Who could puzzle out what any of it meant? Mercy was sometimes delivered in the form of pain, and sometimes a killer wore a savior’s face. None of  the things Dean had mentioned guaranteed anything.

Dean was kissing the side of his face now, wrapping an arm around Cas’ head protectively, pulling them closer together. “You aren’t in trouble, I promise.” He stopped for a moment and sat back a little. “When she saw you’d left me your damn coat, you know what she said to me?”

“What?”

“She said it was _romantic_. Romantic! She practically fucking _sighed_ as she said it.”

“Really?”

“Really. I swear. She wasn’t mad at you. She said she likes you, and she meant it. I’m positive.”

“Alright,” Cas said, kissing Dean back between a smile he couldn’t seem to suppress. “Alright.”

“Hannah was pretty pissed at you, though,” Dean said, pulling away again. “You’ve seriously got to let people know when you’re planning to do huge, fucking stupid things.”

Cas looked down, abashed. “Yes, I...hopefully that lesson will sink in sooner or later. And hopefully Hannah will forgive me eventually.”

“You jailbroke Bobby and she got over it. She forgave you for letting Metatron loose. I think she’s just happy you’re back. She says she needs to give you some kind of...tattoo or something, though. She showed up all ready to do it and that’s when she found out you were gone.” Dean looked appraisingly down Cas’ body. “I don’t get it, you’ve only got the one. Angels don’t seem like the tattoo-getting sort, in general.”

“Oh! Not a tattoo, a sigil. And not on this body.”

“What?”

“A battle sigil. I mentioned them once, remember?”

Dean shook his head. “No idea, sorry.”

“After a successful campaign, an angel customarily gets a sigil, which binds the victory to it, making it stronger in subsequent battles.”

“Really?” Dean asked, raising his eyebrows. “How many have you got?”

“Me? Just over a thousand. A few seem to have been burned off; I suspect that was Naomi’s doing, because I have no memory of having them there in the first place.”

“A thousand? A _thousand_?”

“Well yes,” Cas said, clearing his throat. “I, uh, I didn’t do much of fighting for several millennia, Dean. I was stationed here to watch, not wage war. And some campaigns took hundreds of years to fight. So, yes, only...only a thousand. Just over.”

Dean burst out laughing. “Holy shit, you think I’m giving you grief because you don’t have enough angel tattoos? I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that you’ve lead at least a thousand successful, _century-long_ campaigns.”

“I..oh.” He looked down. Was he blushing? Is that what this was? It felt odd to do so as an angel; surely his grace should mitigate this kind of thing. “Um. Yes.”

“That’s awesome.”

“Thank you.” Emboldened, he looked at Dean again. “I never got one for defeating Raphael,” he said. “So the last one I got was the one I received when I pulled you from Hell.”

Dean went still and looked at him, wide-eyed. “Seriously?”

“Oh, yes. I got it right below the base of one of my wings, on the shoulder.”

“You _didn’t_.”

Cas blinked. “I did, yes.”

“You _romantic_ son of a bitch.”

“It wasn’t romantic at the time,” Cas protested. “It was symbolic of my method of victory.”

“Uh huh, sure,” Dean said, grinning madly. “Whatever you say.”

“Dean.”

“Nope,” Dean said. “Not buying it.” And he pounced, swallowing up any further protests in  a kiss, pressing his full weight against Cas with a teasing roll of his hips that sparked something both ferocious and tender inside of him. The lights flickered momentarily to life, and Dean pulled away with a gasp.  

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” Cas complained. “Get them off, now.”

“I detect a note of an order in there.”

“Surprise me and obey for once.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was much to be done: earth to rebuild and a Heaven to reorder, and the lingering effects of the Cage still on the edges of Cas’ consciousness, probably for some time to come. But for now he had Dean, alive and smiling and pliant and needy, under his hands. The world shrank down to the contour of his kiss-bitten mouth, the drum of his heartbeat, the surprisingly delicate sounds that he gave out, like gifts, at each touch or caress. It had always been a battle about what Cas needed to do and what he wanted to do, but for once, both things were the same.

  
Cas held on to Dean, and Dean held on to Cas, and they did not let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [](https://imgur.com/h5CPDhh)  
>    
> _Well. There we are. This started out as an angry response to the end of the season and turned into an entire alternate season eleven. It is officially the longest thing I have ever written, surpassing my Masters thesis by...oh, about twelve thousand words or so. I've written it on four different computers, many sheets of loose-leaf paper, in pen and pencil, in at least five different houses (occasionally my own!). Whew!_  
>  _I hope you have enjoyed, to whatever degree you deem appropriate, this slice of extreme wish-fulfillment on my part. I don't know if I will write anything else. There may be one or two epilogues to this, but I am not sure. I guess we'll see._  
>  _Thanks for coming along for the ride!_
> 
>  
> 
> **Edited to add:**  
>   
>  _Oh, in case you wondered about the title (which you probably didn't but hey), "apocalypse" comes from the Greek, meaning a revelation or the uncovering of knowledge, or, you know, seeing what is hidden. I hope I've succeeded at least a little in living up to the title._  
>  _PS-Come say hi. I am a perfectly normal human, who will respond accordingly. I promise. ;)_

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't intend for this to be multi-chapter, but things keep crowding my head in this post Season 10 world. I'll change the ratings and tags as appropriate.


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